--- title: "Dry Leaf" year: 2026 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/dry-leaf" fi1m_id: "dry-leaf" imdb_id: "tt37537636" tmdb_id: 1057888 wikidata_id: "Q135257359" fi1m_score: 71 critics_score: 67 critics_reviews: 7 published: "2026-09-21" updated: "2026-09-21T01:43:19.490247+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Dry Leaf (2026) Directed by Aleksandre Koberidze · 3h 06m · MPA NR · Drama, Fantasy ## Identity Dry Leaf - **Canonical:** https://film.one/film/dry-leaf - **Type:** Film - **Fi1m ID:** dry-leaf - **IMDb ID:** tt37537636 - **TMDB ID:** 1057888 - **Wikidata ID:** Q135257359 - **Same entity:** https://www.imdb.com/title/tt37537636/, https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/1057888, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q135257359 **Fi1m score: 71** · Critics 67 from 7 reviews *In a sentence:* A missing-person film shot on a phone so old the countryside itself seems to be going missing > Aleksandre Koberidze’s three-hour search across rural Georgia is shot on an old mobile phone and looks like nothing else we have seen in a cinema, and there are stretches where it is a trial. For the patient it is worth it, with reservations. ## Synopsis Irakli (David Koberidze) is an older man in Georgia whose grown-up daughter has stopped answering her phone. She has been travelling the villages of the countryside photographing their football pitches, and her last messages came from somewhere along that route. He reports her missing to two police officers (Giorgi Bochorishvili and Vakhtang Panchulidze), who take down the details, and then he gets into his car to look for her himself. In the passenger seat is Levan (voiced by Otar Nijaradze), his friend and travelling companion, who cannot be seen by us or, it appears, by anyone else. Together they drive from pitch to pitch, asking whoever they find whether a young woman with a camera has passed through, and the villages are quieter than anyone expected. ## Review Aleksandre Koberidze follows *What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?* (2021) with a film about a father driving round the villages of Georgia looking for his daughter, and he has shot the whole of it on a Sony Ericsson mobile phone of a kind nobody has owned for years. It runs 186 minutes. It is slow, it is frequently lovely, and it asks more of the viewer than it strictly needs to. If patience is something you can bring to a film, this repays it; if it is not, three hours will feel like four. Irakli (David Koberidze) learns that his daughter, who has been photographing village football pitches across the country, has stopped calling. The police take a statement. He gets in his car with Levan (voiced by Otar Nijaradze), a friend nobody can see, including us, and sets out to retrace her route. Koberidze never explains Levan and never treats him as a joke; the passenger seat is empty, a voice comes from it, and the film carries on. The phone is the film. Koberidze is his own cinematographer and editor, and the camera he has chosen cannot see much. A cow at forty yards is a brown rectangle. Headlights at dusk bloom into squares of white and yellow. A boy running across a pitch is a dozen pixels that reorganise themselves every step. Faces up close survive, just, and hands survive better than faces. For the first twenty minutes we took it for a stunt. Then we noticed we were leaning forward, working out what a moving smudge was before the film told us, and that a countryside we had never visited had become something we were building ourselves, from almost nothing. The pitches are the film’s best idea. Every village has one, a rectangle of rough grass with goalposts and no nets, and most of them are empty, or have a cow on them, or two children and a ball. They were made for villages with more people in them, and the film does not need to say so; the emptiness says it. When a match does break out, with men in mismatched shirts and a referee nobody listens to, Koberidze holds on it for as long as it lasts, and one of these, late in the second hour, moved us far more than a picture this rough had any right to. Giorgi Koberidze’s score is used sparingly, and when it does arrive under the driving it lifts the road without telling us what to feel about it. What does not work is the length, and the way the search goes missing along with the daughter. For long stretches Irakli stops asking about her, and the film stops too, and watches a dog, a river, a man fixing a gate. Some of this is the point; not all of it is. Somewhere past the two-hour mark we were bored, and then cross about being bored, because the first hour had promised something with more shape. The invisible passenger, so light in the opening, becomes a device the film reaches for when a scene needs a lift, and by the end we could feel it reaching. Against Koberidze’s own last film this is the harder sit. *What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?* had a town, a love story and a World Cup on the television to hold it together, and its digressions came back to somewhere. *Dry Leaf* has a road and a rumour, and its digressions are the road. The image is bolder here and the story slighter, and the trade is not entirely in the film’s favour. See it in a cinema if you possibly can. Blown up, the pixels become a way of seeing, and the eye learns it in a quarter of an hour. At home it will look for the first ten minutes as though your connection has dropped, and you will be tempted to wait for it to recover. It does not recover. That is the film. *Fi1m score 71, published 21 September 2026.* ## What the critics say Most critics are taken with Dry Leaf, and the praise clusters around one choice: Koberidze shoots three hours of rural Georgia on an obsolete mobile phone, and the pixelated, compressed images are found hazy, hypnotic and romantic. Several reviews describe a childlike or impressionistic way of seeing ordinary encounters and empty spaces. Sight and Sound finds a quietly political portrait of post-Soviet Georgia and its eroding communal life. The score by the director’s brother and the film’s openness to absurdity earn a mention. The reservations cluster around the same choice, from the other side. Screen Daily admires the boldness but finds the pacing an endurance test and doubts the film travels far beyond festivals. IndieWire goes further, calling the low-resolution look wearying and finding less magic in the mundane than in the director’s earlier work. The spread is wide, from warm enthusiasm to fatigue, with the middle ground occupied by critics who call it demanding but rewarding for the patient. ## Straight answers **Is Dry Leaf worth watching?** *Dry Leaf* is worth watching for anyone who can bring patience to three hours of slow, rough-edged, often lovely cinema, and we scored it 71. Aleksandre Koberidze shot the whole search on an old mobile phone, and past the two-hour mark the film drifts and the invisible passenger becomes a crutch. See it in a cinema if you can; at home the pixels look like a fault for the first ten minutes. **How long is Dry Leaf, and what is it rated?** *Dry Leaf* runs 3h 06m and is rated NR by the MPA in the US. It is a drama and fantasy film. **Where can I watch Dry Leaf in the US?** *Dry Leaf* is streaming on MUBI in the US. Availability is checked daily; the links above go straight to each service. **How does Dry Leaf compare to Tangerine?** *Dry Leaf* and [*Tangerine*](https://film.one/film/tangerine) were both shot on mobile phones, and that is where the likeness ends. Sean Baker's Los Angeles comedy is fast, loud and funny, and its phone footage looks sharp; Koberidze's Georgian search is slow, quiet and made of smudges, with a father driving from empty pitch to empty pitch. *Tangerine* is the surer and more enjoyable film; *Dry Leaf* is the stranger and more demanding one. **What should I watch after Dry Leaf?** After *Dry Leaf*, try [*Landscape in the Mist*](https://film.one/film/landscape-in-the-mist) (1988, Fi1m 83): Two children cross Greece looking for a father; Angelopoulos makes the road the story. Then [*Tangerine*](https://film.one/film/tangerine) (2015, Fi1m 84): Shot on iPhones on Christmas Eve in Los Angeles, and it moves faster than anything here. ### Reviews we read (7) - **Variety**, Jessica Kiang (85/100, inferred): The critic finds “Dry Leaf” a joy for devotees of the strange and singular, a defiantly peculiar three-hour meander through rural Georgia that uses pixelated, obsolete-phone imagery to create a romantic, mysterious world. They single out the film's paradoxical pleasures, from the sublime sparks in everyday encounters to its pioneering use of old tech for new cinema. [Read](https://variety.com/2025/film/reviews/dry-leaf-review-1236487253/) - **Sight and Sound** (80/100, inferred): The critic describes the film as a subdued low-tech road movie that invites viewers to adopt a childlike, curious mode of perception through its granular mobile-phone imagery. It singles out the quietly political portrait of post-Soviet Georgia and the erosion of communal spaces for praise. [Read](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/reviews/dry-leaf-alexandre-koberidzes-low-res-road-movie-quietly-political-ode-ordinary) - **Slant Magazine** (75/100, inferred): Koberidze deploys a mischievous gambit with invisible characters and extreme phone-shot compression that renders images impressionistic and hypnotic at times. The critic praises the way the film tasks viewers with imagining and recreating the world amid its slow, contemplative journey. [Read](https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/dry-leaf-review-alexandre-koberidze/) - **Film Comment**, Fatoumata Bah (70/100, inferred): The critic praises how the film starts as a missing-person story but shifts to patient observation of encounters, spaces, and absences in the Georgian countryside. The low-res cellphone cinematography is singled out for creating an impressionistic, enchanting haze that reorients perception of everyday reality. [Read](https://www.filmcomment.com/searching-for-space-dry-leaf-review/) - **Screen Daily** (50/100, inferred): The critic calls it a meditative and elusive picture whose deliberately pixelated low-res aesthetic challenges conventional notions of beauty and cinematic polish. It singles out the bold technical choice and spiritual quality for praise while noting the endurance-testing pacing and limited appeal beyond festivals. [Read](https://www.screendaily.com/reviews/dry-leaf-review-a-meditative-georgia-set-road-movie-shot-on-a-low-res-phone-camera/5210157.article) - **IndieWire**, Josh Slater-Williams (40/100, inferred): The film is low-resolution and ultimately hard going, finding less magic in the mundane than the director's previous work. The critic singles out the pixelated phone-shot aesthetic as a central but ultimately wearying element. [Read](https://www.indiewire.com/criticism/movies/dry-leaf-review-1235145620/) - **Eye for Film**, Lucija Furac (70/100, inferred): The critic describes the film as a challenging slow-cinema experience due to its three-hour length and low-resolution phone footage but finds it rewarding for its dreamy, poetic visuals of rural Georgia. They single out the hazy Sony Ericsson-shot images, the brother's score, and the film's openness to wonder and absurdity for praise, while noting the meandering narrative and limited information disclosure may frustrate less patient viewers. [Read](https://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/review/dry-leaf-2025-film-review-by-lucija-furac) ## Details - **Director:** Aleksandre Koberidze - **Director:** Aleksandre Koberidze - **Writer:** Aleksandre Koberidze - **Cinematography:** Aleksandre Koberidze - **Editor:** Aleksandre Koberidze - **Music:** Giorgi Koberidze - **Producer:** Luise Hauschild, Mariam Shatberashvili, Aleksandre Koberidze - **Cast:** David Koberidze as Irakli; Otar Nijaradze as Levan (voice); Irina Chelidze as Nino; Giorgi Bochorishvili as Police Officer; Vakhtang Panchulidze as Police Officer; Manu Tavadze; Giorgi Lazrishvilli; Natalia Gelashvili - **Runtime:** 3h 06m - **Certificate (MPA):** NR - **Release (the US):** 20 March 2026 - **Genres:** Drama, Fantasy - **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nx1D3hVbMgc ## Where to watch in the US - MUBI: streaming, hd *Checked 2026-09-21.* Also available in: CA, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## If you liked this - *What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?* (2021): Koberidze’s previous film: a Kutaisi love story with a curse, warmer and more generous. - *Landscape in the Mist* (1988), Fi1m 83: Two children cross Greece looking for a father; Angelopoulos makes the road the story. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/landscape-in-the-mist.md) - *Tangerine* (2015), Fi1m 84: Shot on iPhones on Christmas Eve in Los Angeles, and it moves faster than anything here. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/tangerine.md) - *Blissfully Yours* (2002): Apichatpong lets a picnic run for an hour and trusts you to stay. - *Le Quattro Volte* (2010): A goat, a tree, a charcoal kiln and a shepherd; almost no words, all patience. --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/dry-leaf