Dry Leaf 07/26 Blu-ray (Rental)

Lisa, a sports photographer, vanishes off into the greener pastures of the Georgian countryside, traces of her passing embedded in the landscape like clues. Her father, Irakli (David Koberidze), picks up her scent in the ochre foliage and communal soccer fields she documented for her last assignment. His search-and-rescue trip defies her wishes not to be followed. With a disembodied voice in his passenger seat, he embarks on a winding pastoral picaresque, marked by the recurring gaggles of adolescents, wild dogs, and oral histories he encounters along the way. Undulating between impressionistic reverie and subversive detective story, Irakli’s near-fruitless search invites us to see—with renewed eyes—the quotidian elements which constitute both cinema and life. Shot with a pixelated W595 Sony Ericsson phone camera, Dry Leaf stands as a palpable salvo on cinematic degrowth. While director Alexandre Koberidze teeters on the edge of a formal gimmick to challenge technological tyranny, his characters swim against the false currents of modern life. Taking an audacious leap of faith after his breakthrough What Do We See When We Look At The Sky?, and harkening back to his low-res debut Let the Summer Never Come Again, Koberidze reignites the threadbare wonders of cinematic language in spectacular, big-screen fashion.