08/05/2025 - The director’s third film is a road movie set across Georgia, centring on the search for a missing photographer who was last seen snapping football stadiums around the country

Georgian-born, Berlin-based director Alexandre Koberidze will soon have completed his upcoming film, Dry Leaf, which takes us on a trip through Georgian football fields and villages in search of a missing woman. Koberidze’s first feature, Let the Summer Never Come Again [+see also:
trailer
film profile], claimed top prize at FIDMarseille in 2017, while his most recent film, What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Alexandre Koberidze
film profile], won the FIPRESCI Prize in the 2021 Berlinale.

This road movie with a football component tells the story of Lisa, a photographer who goes missing having last been seen snapping football stadiums throughout Georgia. Her father, Irakli, and her best friend, an invisible person called Levani, travel throughout the country in search of Lisa. The term “folha seca”, or “dry leaf” - when translated literally from Portuguese - refers to a way of kicking a football which makes its trajectory highly unpredictable. Incidentally, Koberidze’s Berlinale-prize-winning film also incorporated a football motif.

Koberidze serves as writer and director for the project, while the cast stars the director’s father David Koberidze alongside Irina Chelidze, Giorgi Bochorishvili, Vakhtang Fanchulidze and Otar Nijaradze. Music and sound will be provided by the filmmaker’s brother, Giorgi Koberidze.

Dry Leaf was most recently presented within the 2025 IFFR’s Darkroom works-in-progress market, which is part of the festival’s CineMart industry platform. This year’s Darkroom focus was on Georgian filmmakers, with the selection dedicated to films in post-production or near completion.

This German-Georgian co-production is produced by Mariam Shatberashvili and Luise Hauschild for Germany’s New Matter Films, and co-produced by the filmmaker himself. This marks Koberidze’s second collaboration with the Berlin- and Leipzig-based production outfit. Dry Leaf also received funding from the World Cinema Fund and the Georgian National Film Centre.