Dry Leaf

 

Director Alexandre Koberidze

camera on the set

DRY LEAF                B                                                                                                      Georgia  (186 mi)  2025  d: Alexandre Koberidze

Keep going straight to the end of the road and you’ll find it.

Intentionally shot blurry and slightly out of focus with an old 2008 Sony Ericsson W595 mobile phone that ceased production in 2011, much like his debut feature LET THE SUMMER NEVER COME AGAIN (2017), which was shot with the same camera, this long and meandering film, split into two parts, is a journey in itself, where it’s radically different than anything else you’ll see in theaters, requiring patience and an eye for detail, as we’re seeing everything with unspoiled eyes, like revisiting old photographs, where the one thing you learn here is that it’s not about the final destination, but about the journey itself.  The time spent with this film is an invaluable experience, as the continual blurriness alters our perspective, making us see things differently.  With compliments to Kiarostami’s WHERE IS MY FRIEND’S HOUSE? (1987) and his short film ROADS OF KIAROSTAMI (2005), much of this is spent in rural roadsides, off the beaten path, where the slower pace of life is simply different, becoming not just a road movie, but the inner journey of a man who unwittingly discovers himself, while at the same time it’s an investigative film that challenges the perceptions of viewers, becoming a meditation on Georgian life and landscapes, where at one point a worldly uncle recalls Georgia’s history of Soviet Occupation.  In this culture, it’s not uncommon to approach strangers, or visit unknown homes, where the greeting is always friendly, while in America these days, that kind of behavior could get you shot, as people are so distrustful and suspicious of strangers, yet in the 50’s and 60’s, even in America people left their doors unlocked, as there was no fear that anything bad would happen.  From the maker of 2022 Top Ten List #7 What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? (2021), which was distinctly unique, where the connecting thread to this film is an obsessive passion with soccer, with an explicit homage to Messi, and by the end even Maradona appears.  The outstanding sound design and musical accompaniment is by the director’s brother Giorgi, who also scored his earlier film, a mix of electronic and classical tones, creating a leitmotif accompanying various moments of the journey, perfectly balancing the unique visual experience with an equally original musical counterpoint, where watching this is very much like watching a silent film.  Written, directed, edited, and shot by Koberidze, a director who has always displayed a predilection for acute observation, this is an impressionistic film to get immersed into, feeling like a transformative journey exploring the interaction between humans and their environment, featuring the heavy use of a storyteller-narrator, initially screening at the Locarno Film Festival, which is known for taking on more adventurous projects that mainstream festivals aren’t interested in, receiving a Jury special mention and the Fipresci prize, where you may not find anything else like this in your lifetime, so that by itself is invaluable.  Due to the extreme aesthetic, however, this will probably not be found in theaters and may only be shown at film festivals. 

Growing up in Tbilisi during the post-Soviet era, Georgian citizens often endured long periods of electricity blackouts, where just learning to survive was the main thing.  Graduating from the German Film and Television Academy in Berlin (DFFB), Koberidze contributes writings on cinema to various publications, actively engaging in film criticism and theory.  Like an experimental cinema exercise, the film’s hazy images evoke memories of another time, taking us into a place we’ve never been, challenging viewers in ways unlike other films, capturing the pre-smartphone mindset, when people had a tendency to look around more and actually see their environment, requiring a mental adjustment, where another connecting thread of all Koberidze’s films is that they are full of digressions.  Essentially a father, Irakli (the director’s father David Koberidze), scours the rural countrysides in his Subaru van in search of his missing daughter Lisa, a 28-year old sports photographer who was on assignment photographing abandoned football fields in small communities for a sports magazine, but who has gone missing, albeit intentionally, leaving a note behind not to worry, asking not to be followed, yet after a month passes without a word, fatherly impulses kick in as he tries to retrace her journey in search of football fields in rural villages across Georgia, many of which have been overgrown by wild grass.  A largely internalized journey, finding himself in the same places his daughter has been, the father astutely reflects, “Seeing the same things, even if not at the same time, is a kind of togetherness.”  With the help of the magazine editor Levani (Otar Nijaradze), who just happens to be invisible, yes, that’s right, invisible, as are many others in these remote communities who are questioned throughout the quest, heard but not seen, while others are completely visible, remaining something of a mystery for viewers, like a ghostly aspect, where the past mingles with the present in a relationship that suggests so much of our lives remains hidden and out of sight, even to us, where the past is simply forgotten.  In reference to the title, the director has acknowledged in the Director's Note, “In football, a ‘dry leaf’ is a kick with an unpredictable landing of the ball – much like our characters who surrender to the journey and trust the wind to lead them.”  Going further, “In the late 1950’s, Brazilian footballer Didi introduced a technique for kicking the ball called the ‘dry leaf.’  Just as a dry leaf falls from a tree and it’s impossible for the human eye to calculate where it will land, with this technique it’s impossible for the goalkeeper to predict the exact trajectory of the ball.  The thing is, it remains a mystery for the shooter as well.  Try to remember a leaf falling from above––how it changes direction and speed, sometimes dropping fast and straight to the ground, only for everything to shift suddenly.  It begins to hover slowly and calmly before changing its path again, and so on, depending on the height, the wind, the humidity, and countless other factors we’re not even aware of.  Even when it reaches the ground, the leaf’s journey isn’t over — a gust of wind or a little boy on his way to school might carry it to a different neighborhood, or someone might sweep it into a bag with thousands of other leaves and send it to a place where leaves are burned.”

The way the camera lingers over its subjects and its absurd use of humor recalls the great Georgian filmmaker Otar Iosseliani, maker of BRIGANDS: CHAPTER SEVEN (1996) and FAREWELL, HOME SWEET HOME (1999), who studied under the great Russian/Ukrainian director Alexander Dovzhenko, where repression under the Soviet regime caused him to eventually seek exile in France, as the lingering effect of Russian influence is an invisible force hovering over Koberidze’s films, where the past is always present.  Part of the director’s interaction with invisible characters came about as he was traveling through the rural areas and found it difficult to approach strangers to ask them to appear in his film, so the idea of invisibility allowed him to film more freely, unencumbered by added pressures.  Essentially a landscape road movie with various strangers appearing or interacting at different intervals along the way, as even the faces of the protagonists are a blur, blending into a constantly changing landscape, where the length of the film matters, as it allows viewers to adjust to the rhythms and idiosyncrasies of what they’re watching, using the camera as an unseen character, becoming a mesmerizing experience in the theater, as viewers never know what to expect.  As the scenery shifts from city to countryside, trees, grass, apples, as well as horses, donkeys, cows, cats, and dogs appear more frequently, producing entirely different sounds, like the chirping of birds, or the humming of insects, yet what drives the film is the element of surprise, the curiosity to unravel the family mystery and unlock just what happened to the missing daughter, where only fragments of her presence are detected, which may feel slight for a three-hour film, and it does get repetitive, but it’s a meandering journey that accentuates spontaneity in the moment, honing in on tiny details that would otherwise be easily overlooked, like a cup placed next to a waterfall to allow passers-by to drink.  The camera lingers on changing landscapes at different hours of the day, with varying shades of light, capturing empty fields, cows grazing, dilapidated goalposts, or none at all, while speaking to children playing football along the way, creating a temporal rhythm and visual texture that is entirely its own.  The emphasis on the ruins of goalposts mirrors the use of already obsolete camera technology, where the aesthetic matches the subject matter, as so much of our lives simply fades away over time.  With the destruction of soccer fields to make way for the construction of new hotels, “Where would you play after the football field is demolished?” a young boy is asked.  “Everywhere,” he responds enthusiastically.  Just when you think all hope is lost, a series of events mysteriously alter our perspective, with a resolution happening offscreen, suggesting not all mysteries need to be solved.  Literally defying trends in HD and 4K filmmaking, challenging the direction of where cinema is heading, this is radical yet old-school filmmaking, an immersive sensory experience that creeps up on you, providing a mirror of ourselves, as if existing between reality and a dream, recalling Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES (2010), with the camera essentially inhabiting the subjectivity of a ghostly state of mind.

The Love That Remains (Ástin sem eftir er)

 

Director Hlynur Pálmason

Pálmason and his three children

The Love That Remains (Ástin sem eftir er)               B+                                                         Iceland  (109 mi)  2025  d: Hlynur Pálmason

Returning to the wilderness of his native East Iceland after years in Denmark, writer/director/cinematographer Hlynur Pálmason lives in a house on the outskirts of Höfn í Hornafirði without a single neighbor (Höfn í Hornafirði | The Majestic Town in South Iceland), just next door to Europe’s biggest glacier, Vatnajökull, barely ever using his phone or going on the Internet.  One of cinema’s most singular contemporary artists, perhaps even Iceland’s greatest filmmaker ever, Pálmason has crafted a stunning family drama shot on 35mm that features his own three kids as the children, entrusting them with extensive scenes on their own, yet what stands out is the immense naturalness of the forboding Icelandic landscape mixed with the weirdness of the imagination, accentuated by an evocative old-school sounding piano that turns out to be a jazzy dulcet piano score by Harry Hunt from his 2015 Playing Piano for Dad album, Journeys YouTube (4:04), sounding effortless, becoming an intimate and at times surreal portrait of a fractured marriage.  In what was once a loving couple, industrial herring trawler Magnús (Sverrir Guðnason, an Icelandic-born Swedish actor in his first Icelandic-language part since childhood) and his wife Anna (Saga Garðarsdóttir) have now split up, though still share family meals and spend time together for the sake of the children, moody older teenage sister Ída and the more carefree twin boys Þorgils and Grímur, always accompanied by their ever-faithful Icelandic sheepdog Panda (Pálmason’s own dog), who provides one of the best dog performances ever captured on celluloid, winning the Palme Dog at Cannes.  Absence is a silent killer, as we never witness the break-up of the relationship, only its aftermath of silent suffocation, though the marriage may have been strained by his long trips at sea, where they have to balance the times he’s home and the time he’s away, with Anna convinced she’s better off without him, as then there is no one challenging her independence, which in Iceland is a special spirit that is unlike anywhere else.  With an immaculate sense of framing and pacing, and a heavy dose of humor, creating a space as strange as it is charming, lurking somewhere between Scandanavian filmmakers Ruben Östlund and Roy Andersson, the massiveness of the land commands our attention, as the family is often seen traipsing around the countryside, going on hikes, or just generally having fun and goofing off, where part of the beauty of the film is capturing the casualness and spontaneity of everyday moments in their lives and how they remain connected to the land and sea around them.  Offering a most vivid photograph of the emotions and dynamics that fluctuate under the monotony of the ordinary, inspired by impressionist artists like Sally Mann or Claude Monet, people who return again and again to what’s nearby, the film fully evokes the mantra “Work with what’s around me.”  She is a struggling artist who prefers to work outdoors, an abstract visual artist who works with time and deterioration, allowing her coarse rust prints to be exposed to the elements, whose vast and impressive works that take months to create are not appreciated, yet viewers can decide for themselves what they think, as her working methods blend into the harshness of the surrounding terrain, creating these huge canvases that are a reflection of the ever-shifting Icelandic landscape, time consuming and not easy to make, yet at the core they also reflect her inner spirit, vibrant and rebellious, standing out from the rest as an ode to a free spirit.

Strange and a little offbeat, where its infectious rhythm and narrative disruption creates an off-the-beaten-track playfulness, lending a whimsical air that certainly lightens an otherwise heavy subject matter, standing in stark contrast to the gut-wrenching despair of Swedish director Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage (Scener ur ett äktenskap) (1973).  Initially screening in the Cannes Premiere section, this is a departure from the epic scope of his earlier film GODLAND (2022), which won the Best Feature Film at the Chicago Film Festival that year, as this is a smaller, more contained film, more immersed in nature, accentuating what unites us and divides us, revealing the minor and major mistakes, and the confusions of an Icelandic family, including heartbrteak, miscommunication, and conflicting feelings about what constitutes family.  Exploring the times we live in, the director seems more fascinated in the small and tender moments we share, creating a film that is built from an observational perspective, capturing each nuance of the daily life of the characters, yet he’s not afraid to veer into dreamy surrealistic aspects that are absurdly funny, offering an impressionistic editing style, with a few extra-inconspicuous jumpcuts, feeling intimate and autobiographical, yet it’s an imaginary narrative.  A dark existential heaviness that might otherwise envelop some scenes is bypassed in a very playful way, which might also be related to the remoteness of the coastal town, where time is conceivably decelerated and life here follows a different rhythm.  One thing that stands out is how the kids and the dog run free, with as little supervision as possible, leaving awkward moments with their father who attempts to assert his authority to no avail, as they pretty much ignore him and do what they want, where the vast outdoors is their playground, making this feel like an extremely personal film, much like his earlier short film NEST (Hreiður) (2022), Гнездо / Nest / Hreiður (2022) dir. Hlynur Pálmason [1080p ... YouTube (22:23), where the entire film is a fixed shot from a single location, as these films feature his own kids.  While the short film shows them constructing a treehouse mostly out of sight of any adult presence, where their parents are referred to, but remain mostly offscreen, this film shows them constructing the figure of a knight hanging on a post, which resembles a scarecrow flapping in the wind, with the kids playfully shooting arrows at it, but the image changes over time and during the changing seasons, suggesting the passage of time.  However the relationship between the separated parents feels authentic, with the husband off at sea where he has to contend with vulgar, profanity-laden conversations of other men continually prying into his business, describing his relationship as “I know her and I don’t know her,” while the wife attempts to get recognition for her artwork, but the Swedish gallery owner (Anders Mossling) she meets isn’t really interested and seems more concerned with consuming local food and wine, whose offhanded remark “You’re finally single” does not go unnoticed (nor does his hilarious exit), yet it’s important to note that the interiority of her work is a product and consequence of the outside world, and cannot be fully understood if not seen in that contextual relationship.  Nonetheless, she strives to make sense of the world through her art and in raising her family, where the daily struggles of life become her personal challenge.  This revolving scenario between the lead characters constitutes the film, offering an existential internalized view of their lives, where it’s easy to get distanced and alienated from a shared journey they never expected. 

Ambitious and ambiguous at the same time, what stands out in the adult husband and wife relationship is the fragility of the experience, as both are impacted by the separation, though in different ways.  Each has their own life to lead, pursuing different careers, which entails something completely different from their partner’s experience, yet they share three kids, who still view their absent father as their Dad, and expect to see him regularly, with frequent absences, but they can live with that.  Their mother is a much less hands-on parent, allowing them plenty of freedom, where it’s hard to find anything that constitutes out of bounds, so they show a surprising resiliency, where it all feels normal after a while.  The life of an artist revolves around her work (actually the director’s own art that has been exhibited internationally), which in her case is extremely physical, requiring great dedication and effort, yet she appears driven by her own conceptionary approach, where each project is extremely well thought out, becoming a metaphor for what happens to corroding love over time.  The filmmaker takes no sides, and allows each their own complexities, which is matched by the unique intensity of the free-flowing imagery which is simply not like anything else we’ve seen, as it can be abstract, but also in-your-face, as the idiosyncratic endeavors never detract from the central emotional authenticity.  Without providing any easy answers, it’s important to understand that each has their own distinct personality, as does the nation of Iceland, which holds individuality in high esteem.  The on-again and off-again relationship of the parents feels genuine, as there are moments of tenderness and love, while also their partner can send them into a rage of anger and disgust, where the last thing they need is a sudden, unexpected visit to alter the ordinary rhythms of their lives.  This is typified in an early scene where Magnús shows up unexpectedly at her door, where she initially feels perturbed, but they share a long-held connection to what was once a family, and still is, just not the same, a little broken, leaving them each wounded and internally devastated, left adrift, but they share an unconditional love for their kids, The Love That Remains new clip official from Cannes Film ... YouTube (2:05). While there's a familiarity of a long-held love, there’s also a faint chance of reconciliation, where in one truly extraordinary scene, one of Magnús’s shipmates tells him he should be willing to do anything to save his family, likening it to a greenhouse, where you often have to repair and install new windows to keep the plants inside safe, constantly tending to them and removing the weeds.  But easily the best thing this film offers is the harmonious blend into that massive landscape, with beautiful sequences of Icelandic horses, perfectly accompanied by that pensive music, where the family romps into the great outdoors offer a supreme source of pleasure, where what’s especially impressive is the way the filmmaker weaves it all together, The Love That Remains new clip official from Cannes Film ... YouTube (1:22), delivering a poignant look at the essence of faded love and shared memories amidst the changing seasons, accentuated by that lovely piano score, raw and simple, like the Bo Harwood piano music heard as the parents tenderly tuck their children to bed at the end of John Cassavetes’ A Woman Under the Influence (1974), which feels like a summation of everything that came before.