A Correspondence with Aleksandre Koberidze on Dry Leaf

After the third time I watched Aleksandre Koberidze’s Dry Leaf, late at night last October at the Urania Theatre during the Viennale, I stopped to gather some fallen leaves on the edge of the Stadtpark. It felt only appropriate, given the film – both as a small souvenir of the evening and as a gesture in which I could continue the ones I had seen for little over three hours on the screen: to give my full attention to the most minute details of my surroundings.

Of the films I have seen in recent years, none have struck and, indeed, fascinated me quite like Dry Leaf – Koberidze’s third feature film that embraces both ample duration and a very artisanal production and lo-fi camera (in this case, a Sony Ericsson phone from 2008, the same device the Georgian filmmaker used for his debut, 2017’s Let the Summer Never Come Again). Dry Leaf is earthy, seasonal, and fruitful – and a compelling example of a filmmaker who, after enjoying worldwide success with an earlier work (What Do We See When We Look At The Sky?, 2021, which heavily incorporated elements of magical realism into its own formula), reacts to fame with a kind of recoil, returning to a more artisanal approach. Dry Leaf retains the main device of the previous film: large amounts of nonfictional shots, narrativized and fictionalized a posteriori at the editing table with the help of a poetic narrative voice, while also speculating on these very low-resolution shots. Though “poor images”, to quote Hito Steyerl, they are carefully controlled in terms of visual composition, choreography, depth of field, and especially movement. The story is minimal(istic): a free-form story about a father, Irakli, searching for his missing daughter, a sports photographer named Lisa. Irakli is played by the director’s own father, David Koberidze, while the music is composed by his brother, Giorgi, adding a self-referential layer that further blurs the distinction between the origin of the images and their relationship to fiction. Irakli’s traveling companion, Levan, is literally invisible – he appears only as a voice-over.

This wintery correspondence came about when my wish to interview Koberidze at the Viennale could not be fulfilled – his stay at the festival was too brief. The idea of having only thirty to sixty minutes to discuss such a deeply reflexive and rich film didn’t sit quite right with me, anyway. Thanks to the director’s generosity (and with the help of the Viennale press office head Fredi Themel), we arranged to have a correspondence instead. This format, beyond simply accommodating physical distance, felt much more open and free, ultimately better suited to discuss not just a film such as Dry Leaf, but also to explore his perspective as an auteur on cinema.

Flavia Dima / Monday 15 December 2025
My first question is quite concise: where do you start a new film from? Does it start from images, from the narration, or is it a mix of both – particularly in the case of a film such as Dry Leaf?

Aleksandre Koberidze / Wednesday 17 December 2025
You’re starting with a question that’s difficult, if not impossible, to answer. At least in the moment and for me. Of course, I can recall various elements that led to what is now a film, but it’s pretty hazy. Not because I have a bad memory, but because every attempt to describe where ideas come from is bound to fail at some point. I have found that I have encountered ideas in the most unexpected places and under unexpected circumstances. For example, one of the films I want to make in the future started with a certain type of chocolate. The film I want to make now started with an album by the Pet Shop Boys – that answer is too simple.

A combination of what we have seen, heard, dreamed and felt, together with what we will see, hear, dream and feel, and something we cannot name because we have no words for it, creates a moment in which new things will be born. The rest is perhaps a matter of discipline and passion for the work. Dry Leaf started from the wish to make a film with a Sony Ericsson phone again, to make a road movie starring my father and to film a few invisible characters. Based on this premise, many very different films can be made, and the result has to do with the combination I described above. A friend gave me a poem of a few words, Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize, and a friend wrote a post about it on Facebook, mentioning another book that also inspired this film. Another friend brought home another book he had received from another friend, and this too had a profound influence on Dry Leaf, although this happened many years before I knew I wanted to make this film. One day I remembered how Abbas Kiarostami films a car in Certified Copy... This list could go on for many pages, but I’ll stop here; perhaps that was already too much. I’m curious to hear what you think about it. Where do ideas come from?

Dima / Friday 19 December 2025
I’ve kept thinking about your answer: how such explanations are bound to fail at some point, perhaps because we share a sense of common humanity while remaining painfully aware of being bound by our own individuality, for better or worse. At the same time, I was reminded of a text I recently read by Andrei Ujică, in which he suggests something along these lines: if literature creates in one’s mind the process of turning words into images, then cinema does the “opposite” – it invites us to turn images into words. But I believe Dry Leaf defies his definition. It does both: it creates both unseen images and unspoken words. At least, that’s what it did for me, due to its construction – the search, the invisible characters, the ambiguities and unknowns, the particular sense of time passing that it evokes. Not much cinema works in such close collaboration with its spectators, offering them so much freedom to participate in what it is. And involving them so beautifully, too. Here I’m thinking of the sequence in What Do We See When We Look At The Sky? where we’re asked to close our eyes.

So my question is: how do you consider this particular aspect of the spectator’s participation into what the film becomes while working on it?

Koberidze / Wednesday 24 December 2025
Yuri Norstein begins his book with a joke. Two men are sitting in a prison cell. One of them is writing something. “What are you writing?” asks the other. “A letter”, comes the reply. “To whom?” the bored prisoner asks. “To myself”, replies the one writing. “What does it say?” The bored prisoner won’t leave the other one alone. “I don’t know, it hasn’t arrived yet”, replies the one writing. That’s how it is with filmmaking, writes Norstein. It’s like writing a letter to yourself: you only find out what it says once the film is finished. This way of thinking is very close to my heart. I gave up trying to plan exactly how a film should become after my very first short film. Since then, every film I’ve made has not been something I wanted to tell others, but rather an opportunity to see a little more than before. Of course, I have something to say and share, and I try my best, but I know that’s not the purpose.

To Norstein’s joke I would add that even when the film is finished and “the letter has arrived”, it remains difficult for the filmmaker who made it to read that letter. No matter how hard you try, you never forget that you made it – so you are the only one who will never know what it really is, what it has become. This means that such work can only truly exist with spectators. I hear many different interpretations and understandings of my films, and I have complete trust in others. There are people who have wonderful gifts for sensing, seeing or interpreting, and it is thanks to them that the films exist. For the filmmaker, the only way to watch their own work is perhaps to suffer from amnesia (knocking on wood three times). Only by forgetting everything could you really watch your own film and complete it as a spectator. In Dry Leaf, this aspect of completion is also integrated into the film’s visual form. The low resolution clearly forces the viewer to fill in the gaps, and how these gaps are filled will inevitably differ from one viewer to another.

Dima / Wednesday 31 December 2025
I’ve pondered a great deal about your answer and about the lovely joke with which you begin: it resonated deeply with me, and so did the serenity with which you regard these things. I have always believed that the mark of a great filmmaker lies in the desire to discover something within the process of making a film, rather than simply “executing” a vision down to the smallest detail. It is a way of “surrendering” oneself to the fundamental elements of cinema and trusting that they will lead into the right direction – together with this wonderful, total trust in the spectator. And perhaps trust is becoming an increasingly rare sentiment in our time, especially when it comes to the image, which makes it all the more precious to encounter.

This brings me to another question. One aspect of Dry Leaf that has left me in awe each time I’ve watched it was how – in your role as the film’s cinematographer – you transform what many would consider the “limitations”, “errors” or “faults” of the camera phone into spectacular moments of extraordinary cinematic invention. For example, I recall one shot that (seemingly) begins at night, only for a panning movement to reveal daylight. It’s pure cinematic magic: the bending of the rules of tangible reality through the image – and, in this case, it is achieved by embracing the very low sensitivity and automatic adjusting of the Sony Ericsson camera’s electronic sensor as an advantage. At other moments, the granulation of the low resolution produces textures that recall the impressionists. So, naturally, I’d to hear more about how you approach your use of the camera and, in particular, how you find beauty and structure within these so-called “imperfections”.

Koberidze / Tuesday 13 January 2026
It’s amazing, we could discuss the topics you raise endlessly. But as with the Sony Ericsson, it would be better to set a limitation, and perhaps this restriction will lead us to a favourable outcome in this case as well. Whilst the visual dimension of a film encompasses many different aspects, and a cinematographer has to consider countless details, I will focus on the two words you mentioned: resolution and beauty.

When I bought this phone in 2008, I didn’t even know it had a camera. I wanted a phone to listen to music, and the consultant recommended this model. When I later discovered the camera, I took a few photos and, for the first time in my life, I found some of the photos I had taken to be beautiful. Although I was already interested in cinema and filmmaking, I had long been convinced that I couldn’t take photos or videos myself. Despite many attempts, I never liked what I captured. However, with this camera I did. This discovery fascinated me so much that a few days ago, when I was transferring photos taken with this camera from one hard drive to another, I realised I have around 280,000 photos. That means that since 2008 I have taken an average of 45 photos per day – and have been doing so for 17 years. Considering that there were periods when I didn’t use this camera at all, there must also have been times when I made an enormous number of images. It’s a bit like an obsession, and it arose from the discovery that I could make beautiful images to my taste.

The concept of beauty is elusive. For a long time, the beauty I saw in the images captured with this camera remained inexplicable to me. It still does. Yet one aspect seemed relatively clear to me after I heard an interview with Georgy Rerberg, in which he quotes Leonardo da Vinci: “Beauty lies in the struggle between light and darkness”, Leonardo wrote. “That is both my profession and my attitude to life”, says Rerberg in this interview. Perhaps this is only my interpretation, but I believe one of the things that fascinates me about these images and that I refer to as beauty is precisely that. Because the camera has difficulty capturing light and is constantly trying to do so, we see this struggle constantly, in both moving and still images. The newest cameras, which perceive light far more effectively than the human eye, are almost entirely free of this challenge. The entire development of video recording has aimed precisely to make this battle invisible. So if we use a modern camera with almost no limitations, yet this struggle matters to us, we have to look for other ways to make it visible. With the Sony Ericsson, it is always present. The limitation becomes a gift. I also wanted to talk about resolution, but I may have already written more than enough. One cannot reflect on limitations and write endlessly, so I will stop here for now.

Dima / Thursday 22 January 2026
280,000 photos, that is absolutely incredible. If my math is correct, if you were to play them at 24 frames per second would result in around three hours of film.

This lovely idea you describe towards the end of your missive, the struggle between light and darkness as a spring for beauty, more than a topic that seems oh so fit to our world as it stands nowadays, is also one that permeates your larger body of work. I think of the important role played of night in What Do We See; of the spotlight and the interplay of light and shadows in Linger on Some Pale Blue Dot. It’s an attitude both towards the image and narration, and, dare I say, towards life itself.

I fully agree with what you say about modern camera technology. As Hito Steyerl would put it, the “poor image” indeed has many gifts to offer. Perhaps this is why many young people today are drawn to such cameras – not just out of the age-old nostalgic fascination with “retro” technology, but because they speak to them about imperfection and limitation in a beautiful way.

Indeed, these glimpses of beauty that you catch as you move ahead through the Georgian countryside – to paraphrase Jonas Mekas – are often overwhelming. Naturally, I am drawn to ask you about the road. Especially since, in the film’s coda, you reveal that the road, the journey, the travel, is the true heart of Dry Leaf. In doing so, you eschew traditional narrative approaches, where the onus is always put on the finishing line, on the end goal (here, Irakli’s finding of Lisa), on the resolution, rather than the medium. How did you plan out Irakli’s travels, both in narrative terms, at the writing table, as well as in practice, together with your father, David Koberidze, who plays the leading role in the film? How much of it was planned, and how much was spontaneous, immanent along the way?

Koberidze / Thursday 29 January 2026
I was preparing for the shoot when I read Masanobu Fukuoka’s book, The One-Straw Revolution. Fukuoka’s method of farming is based on complete trust in the land and plants, on the belief that the land and plants know best how to organise the space themselves in order to flourish. For those who use this method, this does not necessarily mean less work, but rather a different kind of work.

I read the book in April 2022. Russia's full-scale war against Ukraine, which began in February of that year, was and remains one of the turning points in my life, as it is for many other people. It was clear that everything had changed. I had changed too. Ideas that had been considered true until then were called into question. For a time, it seemed impossible even to think about the film. Then, the thoughts slowly returned, but it was clear that the plans and the desires associated with this film could no longer be realised as I had intended. These desires and plans belonged to my pre-war self, and the work had to unfold alongside the war. It is difficult to make a film, or anything, when the knowledge you wanted to rely on seems to have vanished. I couldn’t find anything to hold on to. I didn't know what to orient myself toward, which direction to take, or which idea to pursue.

At that very moment, I came across Fukuoka’s book and decided to approach my work as he approaches his: by trusting the material, the medium, the work itself, and by following it. (Today I realise that this desire stemmed from the feeling of being lost after the outbreak of war; at the time, I did not know that.) If one can grow vegetables without dictating where and how they must grow, perhaps one can also make a film without dictating the precise conditions in which something should happen, or the exact way it should be captured. If we assume that a pumpkin or cauliflower growing from a small seed is no less, if not more, miraculous than a collection of images captured by a camera, then this assumption might indeed be true.

As I mentioned earlier, this approach does not necessarily mean less work, but a different kind of work. I tried to follow (trust) the path as best I could: both the paved or unpaved paths, and the inner path with its own commandments. It was particularly difficult at the beginning. After all, every decision usually rests on some form of logic. For example, we are driving a car: we need to stop somewhere to film, but why here, and not 100 metres or 10 kilometres further on? Slowly, I got accustomed to making decisions guided by immediate impulses. After some time, a natural thread started to emerge from decisions made in this way, which was easier to follow. Sometimes you worry that you’re not on the right path, that you should have turned right instead of left, gone up instead of down. And then something happens, sometimes something very small, and you realise that you are exactly where you need to be.

I really love making storyboards, and I've worked that way on almost all my other films. In this case, it was the first time I started filming without one, thinking about each scene only while filming, what combination of shots would suit a particular situation. When you work like this, it is extremely important to have someone by your side who does not rush you and does not get annoyed. That requires great patience, and it was crucial to have my father and my brother with me. I really didn’t know where the journey was leading us, what kind of film we were making. I still don’t know exactly what it has become, and I’ll probably never will. We already talked about that above.

Dima / Sunday 1 February 2026
I’m constantly surprised by how you seem to anticipate where I’d like to go next in every one of your responses – because my next question concerns your decision to work with your closest family members on this film. There’s a particular kind of warmth that radiates from Dry Leaf, and I believe it has to do with this choice, in particular. Beyond the, one might say, Bressonian atmosphere that occasionally arises from their performances, there is something very tender here. Not in the sense of naturalism or realism, but in the “opposite” direction: a kind of hidden playfulness, an openness to act and play, together with a quiet trust and calm within the cinematic situation, something one rarely sees in fiction cinema.

And I think about this not only in relation to your father’s performance, or your mother’s, but also to many of the other characters Irakli encounters in his search for Lisa, like the lovely uncle from the countryside with his amazing reminiscences. All of this comes together with the music composed by your brother, who captures this fragility, this tender essence, with remarkable sensitivity. The rhythms of his melodies beautifully complement the film’s cyclical dimension.

Naturally, I am tempted to ask how much of themselves your family brought into the film – and how much came from the story. (And, of course, I am also curious about what it was like for them to work with “invisible” screen partners.)

Koberidze/ Sunday 1 February 2026
I will try to generalise my answer. I believe that the state of mind of someone who is making a film, or pursuing any creative activity, has a direct influence on the work. The mood, thoughts, attitude, anger, sadness, or love one feels are carried over to those experiencing their work. That’s why films often turn out differently from what we imagined. We may have thought or intended one thing, but actually felt something else, and often that’s exactly what becomes visible. Sensitivity and insensitivity, love and lovelessness: in fact, nothing can be hidden.

In analogue film, the carrier of these “emotions” is the grain; in digital formats, it is the pixels. The thing is that modern cameras manage to “hide” the pixels, and this “cleanest” image no longer has a chance to convey the author’s inner vibrations. (But that’s another topic, we already touched on it when we discussed the camera and light.) I just want to say that it may sound a little romantic, but I believe that whatever you feel is captured in your work. And when you are surrounded by people you love, those feelings are also woven into the image (or into whatever else you are trying to create).

Let me give you a good example. The food that grandma cooks always tastes better than what a professional chef prepares. The reason is simple: grandmothers love us, whereas chefs do not. If a chef could love every customer as deeply as a grandmother loves her grandchildren, we would have a truly wonderful cook. This may be reason enough to work with people with whom we have a warm-hearted relationship, and whose inner worlds we would like to bring into our work. Because, of course, whether to a greater or lesser degree, the mood of everyone involved in making the film leaves its mark on the image. A film is made by many people, or at least by a few. Of course, I do not mean that we should work only with family members. But then again, why not?

Dima / Monday 9 February 2026
It’s been such a joy to read your thoughts over these past weeks that I must confess I kept delaying my reply. I am sad to see this exchange come to an end – just as, when I was watching Dry Leaf in the cinema, I didn’t feel “burdened” by the weight of its duration but quite the opposite. I wished it would extend indefinitely, that Irakli would continue on forever in his search for Lisa. Perhaps the best way to reflect on this extension is to think of your future work. Are you planning something new at the moment? Is your Sony Ericsson looking for new sights, or are you considering other cameras and means of expression as well?

Koberidze / Thursday 13 February 2026
I am thinking about the next film, the one after that, the one after that, and the one after that as well. To be honest, the order is not so important to me, as long as I am filming something. The next film will be shot on 16 mm, and the one after that too. Then I would like to return to the Sony Ericsson, but to work with it differently than before. I have never used artificial lighting when filming with my mobile phone, and would like to move in this direction; shooting more interior scenes with carefully constructed lighting setups. Houses with fireplaces, candles and old-fashioned lamps placed in snowy landscapes. Yesterday, I watched Drive My Car again. Although the film’s dramaturgical layer is so important, I felt once more that the gaze is the essential element in this film as well. For example, at 10:35, the main character throws away his waistcoat, and we see a shot of the chair on which it falls. This image can be interpreted in different ways; we might connect it to the protagonist’s mood or another dramaturgical element. But perhaps what matters most is that the author wanted to capture that chair on which the vest is falling. I have very similar desires for the future.