'Dry Leaf' Courtesy of Alexandre Koberidze/New Matter Films Share on Facebook Share on X Share to Flipboard Send an Email Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Print the Article Post a Comment Georgian writer-director Alexandre Koberidze (What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?) shot his latest feature film, Dry Leaf, on an old Sony Ericsson phone, with his father, David, as the star, and music and sound courtesy of Alexandre's brother Giorgi. The movie follows Irakli, "a father searching for his daughter Lisa, a sports photographer who vanishes while documenting soccer stadiums in rural Georgia," explains a synopsis. "True to Koberidze's (What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?) style, this is less a thriller than it is a contemplative pilgrimage, each scene illuminated by poetic encounters." Related Stories Music "I'd Do It Again Tomorrow": Bob Vylan Frontman Defends Glastonbury Chant, Calls Backlash "Disproportionate" Business AFM, Cannes Market Partner on Innovation Hub, AI Sessions for 2025 Edition Shot entirely on a Sony Ericsson mobile phone, the images are often colorful but hazy, transporting the audience to another time and place. The film has been described as an exploration of fate and serendipity. And just like What Do We See, it touches on soccer. The title Dry Leaf is a reference to a shooting technique in soccer, invented by Brazilian legend Didi and still being used by the likes of Cristiano Ronald, in which the ball is kicked with no or little spin, which causes it to take an unpredictable path. The movie world premiered at Locarno, where it earned a special mention on awards night. It just screened at the 69th edition of the BFI London Film Festival (LFF). Koberidze talked to THR about his choice to use a mobile phone camera to film Dry Leaf, his brother's sound and music work, why some characters in the movie are invisible, and the Pet Shop Boys-inspired film that is next for him. I am so curious to hear about the phone you used to shoot Dry Leaf and why you picked it? It's made with a Sony Ericsson phone, which I first bought in 2008. It's a pre-smartphone, so there are no lenses or so. Also, color-wise, this phone doesn't give you many possibilities. You can choose more blue or more red, like warm or cold, and mostly, I went for warm. I bought the same model in 2008 to listen to music. But then I discovered that it also takes pictures and videos, and I really got obsessed with taking pictures with it for many years. In 2014, I started to film my first feature with it, which was released in 2017. After that, I had the feeling that it was enough for some time. So I took this break, and my next film I made on a more usual format. But I really started to miss this way of working with a phone, when you can work alone. It was quite a shock when, after eight years of taking pictures where you see half of the information, to have this quality jump. So you went back to the phone? What was the challenge in working with the higher-quality camera for you? It was a big challenge for me, for example, because of the framing. Inside the frame, it's also always about how to hide some stuff and how not to show everything. There are so many tools, with light or composition, to make everything 100 percent clear with high-definition cameras and so on. But the Sony Ericsson shows you a really small part of reality, so you think about other things hidden because of the format. You said at Locarno that the production plans for Dry Leaf changed as you went along, which is in line with the theme of unpredictability of life. Can you share a bit about the journey that led to the film? When I started to think about this film, one of the first ideas was to make a road movie. And I thought it would be good to have a reason why someone takes this journey, but also have reasons why we go to certain places. And then I just remembered these football [meaning: soccer] fields, sometimes you can't even call them fields, but places. Every village has a place where young people and kids gather to have fun, and mostly, if there is a ball, the kids play football. I was always fascinated by how this is really a community thing, which brings kids together. But in some villages, everyone left, and only some old people are still living there, because younger people go to the city to work. With the fields and stadiums, it was not my decision from the beginning to have them shown mostly empty. But there are places where you have to come at a certain time to see people there. But that's how it developed, and I was also getting more and more bothered by bothering these people. I was getting more and more uncomfortable with that idea I had had in the beginning. So every time we had an empty place, I was okay to film it that way, even though in the beginning I thought maybe we should wait for some people to come and say, "I want to film you." So, in the end,