Film Show 052: Alexandre Koberidze
An interview with the Georgian filmmaker about protesting, how shooting with a Sony Ericsson cellphone gave him a sharper eye, and his new feature film ‘Dry Leaf’
Alexandre Koberidze
Alexandre Koberidze (b. 1984) is a Georgian filmmaker who has been a central figure of his country’s new era of bold, imaginative filmmaking. His debut feature, Let the Summer Never Come Again (2017), was an audacious 200-minute city symphony and gay romance shot on a Sony Ericsson cellphone. Koberidze followed it up with the critical darling What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? (2021), opting for better film equipment but maintaining the playfulness and fairy-tale charm that has characterized his career from his early short films. His third feature, Dry Leaf, premiered at this year’s Locarno and will have its North American premiere as part of TIFF’s Wavelengths program.
Dry Leaf is a three-hour road-movie dreamscape that follows a father named Irakli as he embarks on a journey to find his missing daughter Lisa. Assisting him is an invisible man named Levani. Returning again to the Sony Ericsson camera, Koberidze provides meditations on history and memory and loss throughout the Georgian countryside. In the process, he provides opportunities to consider the way that image and sound, in their varying degrees of clarity, can more readily capture the real than anything of the highest quality. Joshua Minsoo Kim spoke with Koberidze on September 2nd, 2025 to discuss the sacrifices of older generations, working with his brother on Dry Leaf’s soundtrack, and how his Sony Ericsson cellphone helped him have a sharper eye.
Joshua Minsoo Kim: How’s your day been?
Alexandre Koberidze: It’s been okay. It’s a strange day here for politics and the next days will be hard, but we’re used to this. Today and tomorrow are a bit different because we have more than 60 political prisoners and they’re announcing the final verdicts for how long these people should stay in jail. Today, it was for 10 people and tomorrow it’ll be 11. These are really young people—they’re like 18 or 19 years old, and some are a bit older. This has been going on for a long time; we’ve been protesting for the whole year. Normally it’s very repetitive because we go out to protest and then come back, but these days are different as there are big things happening.
Have you always been politically engaged and participating in protests?
I was doing it before, though not as actively. Now it’s every day. And there are a lot of people out there, not just activists. It’s very interesting to see how slowly it has become clear for people that there is now no other way. We see these dynamics. When the protests started in the winter, it was much bigger of course—it was like hundreds of thousands of people. Now it’s less because people can’t go out every day for hundreds of days, but it’s been interesting to see how people completely changed their lives for this. When you have this routine every evening to protest, it becomes a really significant part of your day. You have to change all your habits. You can’t just go out in a normal way, you can’t go on a date (laughter). It’s from 8 to 11. It’s really hard to live with this sort of routine; it affects your health and your nerves. But it’s interesting because a lot of people still go there, and I’ve met many different people I didn’t know there and it’s become a meeting place for people who care.
Is there anyone you’ve met at these protests who have really shaped your life?
Yeah. I haven’t been there every single day; sometimes I decide to do something else, and now I’m traveling with my film, but I try to be there every day. There are people, though, who live a normal life—they have jobs and families and kids—and they’ve managed to not miss a single day. They’re the first to arrive and the last to leave. When other people feel tired or feel like it doesn’t make sense to protest anymore, you think of these people and it gives you power. There are many people like this. These are people who were never into politics who then found themselves active in this moment. And there are many different people who’ve shaped all this organizing. There’s so much energy these people have, and these are people you’d never think would be able to do this. They show such unbelievable energy and skill; they give us hope.
Do you feel like engaging in these protests and meeting these people have shaped the way you think about filmmaking or art in general?
It’s different. From day one, there were these amazing folk singers who would sing songs and everything would change. It was really cold in the winter, and to stand there in the snow or rain and hear their voices… you felt like you could do this all again tomorrow. This is a very simple example because everyone has felt how encouraging that music can be, but during these times, when people really needed it—and it’s not just about being in a bad mood, it’s a critical moment for our country and for all of us—it really showed how powerful it can be. I go there without my camera. From the beginning I decided just to be there and not to connect it with my work. But of course, when you do this it shapes who you are and what you do.
What was it like growing up in Tbilisi? This could be related to the arts or politics or anything in your childhood. What comes to mind?
It’s a lot, you know? It’s hard to pick something. Growing up here in Tbilisi in the ’90s, which was a post-Soviet and post-Civil War city, we’d often have no electricity. There were a lot of problems, and even as a kid you don’t like when there’s no electricity. I realized much later on how, for my parents and their generation, they were trying to survive in a way so that our generation could still have a normal life. I never really felt scared—maybe one or two times—but generally, I had a happy childhood. Thinking about all this, it’s connected to the idea of how people would always give themselves completely to you. For our generation, this is the main thing that connects more or less everyone. That’s how we grew up, and we realize that we can live a normal life because others sacrificed theirs. I was spending a lot of time going out to play with other kids, playing football. I think most of my youth was spent going to school, being lazy afterwards and playing football instead of doing homework (laughter).
Was there a specific field you went to play football?
Because this time was so chaotic, there weren’t a lot of fields that were in good enough shape to play in. We would just play in front of our houses. Everywhere you went, there was a place to play, and these weren’t actual places that were meant for football, but that’s the interesting thing about sports: you can set up the rules yourself. You can create the space to do it anywhere.
Would you say the happiest moments of your childhood involved playing football?
Football was always a big joy. I went to a school where they’d take us for a month to these camping places and we’d be there in the mountains for a month. We didn’t have anything to do except play football; we had the ball and a lot of kids so that’s what we did. It wasn’t really camping because there were these rooms you stayed in, but we were there for a month, and no other schools were really doing this. This was the first time I’d left my home for that long—I was about 9 or 10. Most people would say that these are some of the best memories of their childhood.
You mentioned earlier that people were really passionate about sacrificing their lives for your generation. Do you mind talking about the people who did this for you, and how you first realized that this was happening?
It’s a slow process. It’s my parents and grandparents and their friends. I wasn’t just observing my own family; it was a big group of people all helping each other, and they were spending a lot of time together. At a certain point, when you’re 25 or 30—and with our generation, we still felt young and were having fun or studying—but you realize that our parents were my age by the time I was born. They had to live a completely different life than the one I have now.
Since the beginning, your films have been interested in fantasy. I think of the history of Georgian film with something like Otar Iosseliani’s April (1961), but where does your interest in the fantastical come from?
I don’t know, but I can speculate that it has a lot to do with fairy tales that my parents and especially my grandma would read to me. This happened for a long time, and I really, really loved it. But I don’t think it’s just this. It’s hard to say why this element is in my work, but I think it has to do with the character of a person, of how they see the world and how they think it all works. It’s about one’s relationship with the world. If I think about the past, I think at some point I started to distrust some knowledge which was given as some factual thing. I learned at some point that animals can laugh, and it might be different than we may expect, but this is something we share.
It gave me this thought that if the feeling of love is something I can’t explain, and maybe there are some theories that can get into an explanation of how our body or psychology works, I would rather try to keep it as something unexplainable. It was a really strong ground to stand on, to say that if something is impossible to explain, and that this is something that connects us with animals—that they can have the same feelings as us, or even more feelings—it means that there are all these other feelings that have been left unexplored. It’s interesting to give space to this.
I appreciate the way animals exist in your film. They provide a reminder of the unknowability of things. That goes back to the donkey in Looking Back is Grace (2013). Do you mind talking about that film and how you approached using that animal? That was 12 years ago, so I know it’s been some time.
It was a really long time ago, and it was one of the first things I filmed. This film is based on a short story that was written by a Georgian writer who is my father’s friend. It’s from 1984. It’s not the exact same, but the premise is the same—something strange happens in a city and it changes the lives of those who experience it. In that story, there are camels that appear in a metro station. I wanted to keep this element, this animal, but I wanted to change it. And there’s a production aspect: working with a donkey was easier. I also remember that we had a choice between animals that were maybe easier to bring. I thought it was an intuitive thought, that donkeys are connected with film history—you see donkeys a lot. It’s such a symbolic creature. And when I think about it now, it’s Biblical, and every time you show it in a mysterious way, it can evoke many ideas. I wouldn’t have done this today. I don’t like bothering animals who all have nothing to do with the film I’m doing. Back then, it was not really too much because this little zoo was near where we were filming and they just walked there; it wasn’t a long process. But I still think it’s stressful how there’s these people with cameras and lights doing stuff to an animal. He was just standing there with very little emotion. I wouldn’t repeat that now.
Your interest in the fantastical feels related to your interest in silent films. You have something like Colophon (2015) which has intertitles, and you allow it to be silent during those passages. I like that Linger On Some Pale Blue Dot (2018) is sort of like a fantastical take on an industrial film. There’s a sort of gravitas to every single gesture and image in that, and you have a lot of dramatic music there too.
It’s impossible to avoid the art that has come before you. I think it’s a blessing. I make films because I love what I’ve seen. If you think about the French New Wave and how they had these ideas that were meant to destroy the films of their elders… well, when you see their films you realize it actually comes from a complete love for the cinema back then. Art is not like science, where one idea destroys a previous one; with art, you make something and it is in a lineage, it becomes a part of something. If I don’t see a good film for a while, I can forget why I love films in general. Films from the early era of filmmaking are really important in that sense; I know that when I can’t find a movie, they’ll remind me that making films is good, I’ll turn on an old film and see all the joy and magic of cinema.
When you think about the beginning of cinema and how differently it worked and how many possibilities it showed, and then think about how narrow it is now—or at least this is what the industry is proposing—it can be discouraging. The mentality you needed to have to make films back then allowed for different ideas about dramaturgy and stories. Companies now have ideas of how cinema should look or be today, and if you’re not doing it like that, it makes you feel like you can’t do it. Some people may feel like, because of these reasons, that they can’t make films in a specific way, but of course that’s not something I think about a lot.
What was it like to go from making your short films to your debut feature Let the Summer Never Come Again (2017)? You used a Sony Ericsson phone to shoot the entire film—what sort of things did you learn from using it?
There was a lot of learning, in every sense. On one hand, I also filmed it myself and it’s a very different experience. I worked with, more or less, complete freedom; I could do anything I wanted. Normally, you have limitations for how long you can shoot. Here, I had as many days to film. It was interesting to let go, to see what could happen. In the writing process, I realized that I needed to create some limitations to the story, about how many subjects could be in the film. As with any moment in history, it was a hard and dramatic time and there were different things I cared about, and because of this I felt it should be a part of my film. And at a certain point I realized it was too much, and it was good to realize this “too much” by myself, that it wasn’t someone else saying it to me, which is how it usually works. An important thing I understood from this process was that I somehow started to believe that you don’t really have to mention everything. I had this idea that if you care about something, and if you really do care about it, you don’t always have to talk about it. If you have a certain feeling, it’ll still be a part of your film—maybe not directly, but someone watching it will still feel it. How much really translates is impossible to know, but even having this understanding of the medium’s capabilities was a big discovery for me. It was very connected with the way of making the film. I was holding the camera and I was making the decisions, which meant that a big part of myself was going to be there.
Did you learn anything about yourself as a result of making the film? Are there autobiographical components?
With every film you make, there’s a big change. After every work, you’re different. It’s kind of scary (laughs). It can also be strange for the people around you because if you make something every two or three years, you can have this feeling that every film is a really big event. I was completely in it, and when it was done, everything around me, including myself, somehow changed. Working with this small Sony Ericsson meant filming a lot, not just for this film but even before and after. I was filming before I was making the film and I became a different kind of observer. I was seeing much more than I would in normal daily life. When you have this camera with you, you know that any moment could be part of a film; if you see something interesting, you can film it. You start having this feeling all the time; it becomes a part of your every moment, this feeling of always looking for something. And I’m not saying you’re doing this to see what could be used in a future work—it’s about what you can take with you now. Even if you’re finished with filming, you still have this eye. You’re always looking for something.
I had a break between Let the Summer Never Come Again and Dry Leaf (2025) where I didn’t use this camera, with What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? (2021). My eye had become less precise because of this break, so I needed some time to sharpen it again.
Do you feel like your eye was less sharp while making What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? because you used more formal equipment?
Yes, I think so. But when I was making that film, I still had my Sony Ericsson with me and I was still taking a lot of pictures with it. And even though I didn’t use them for the film, they still inspired it somehow. We’d go to locations and I’d take pictures, and after we finished What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?, I was very tired and we had a break. I acted in my friend’s film [Julian Radlmaier’s Bloodsuckers (2021)], and there was a period where I was really done with filming. I put my little camera aside. I was so used to using this phone that I realized that I really needed it to see. For 10 years or so, it was with me all the time. During What Do We See, I’d take it with me on walks and I was taking pictures and finding places to then use in the film. The walks were with the cinematographer [Faraz Fesharaki], and he’d joke that I’d use this material later in the film. He had his doubts about me making videos with the phone, but it really helped me see.
Was the Sony Ericsson your phone for regular daily purposes too?
Yeah, up until the final preparation for What Do We See. That’s when I got an iPhone from our producer. Sometimes you get images sent to you by the art director or costume designer and you have to respond quickly, and I was the only one without a smart phone. I was slowing everything down and I was told that after the film I could just get rid of my iPhone, but I didn’t.
How’s it been with the iPhone?
It’s strange. I was really addicted to Instagram Reels, though less so now. They were really inspiring though because you’d find things you’d never see, and there would be really funny and crazy things. This is a banal thought, but smart phones take more than they give. I’m sure about this. When I was making Let the Summer Never Come Again, I didn’t have a smart phone and I remember being on the bus or in the city and looking around. You don’t have any other choice but to look around. I’d listen to music, sure, but my eyes would look around. And in that film there are so many images on the bus and in the city; you can tell it’s made by someone who doesn’t have a smart phone. And nowadays, I look less at my surroundings because of my smart phone… (in a dejected tone) so yeah.
So did Dry Leaf get you back into the mindset of those pre-smart phone days?
With Dry Leaf, we were filming outside of the city. And while I tried not to use it a lot, I was sitting next to the driver, who was one of the actors, and I would use Google Maps to see where to go. So it was still an active device, especially because we were driving. I know I missed things because I was looking at my phone to say where we had to go, and I was the person during this shoot who would suggest where to stop.
Earlier you mentioned that you were inspired by the way your grandmother told fairy tales. Was there a specific way that she told these stories that have impacted your films? Maybe it has to do with the tone, or the narration in What Do We See, or the way you structure your films.
It’s really hard for me to remember everything, but I’m quite sure that the voiceover and storytelling in all my films is all connected to that. The tone and pace of this narration has to do with something in my past, no? I imagine it was connected with how she would do it. I know that she would often translate them live—her books were in English or Russian. It was a bit slower than normal reading, and this slower pace has to do with how I make things.
In a past interview you’ve mentioned that you would take screenshots of films and then reference them later. With Dry Leaf, it’s hard not to think about Kiarostami and impressionist painters like Cézanne. What sort of artists were you thinking about when making the film?
This time, it was less precise than with my previous films. With What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?, we had a lot of different influences and ideas that were kept in these folders, and these were directly connected with specific scenes. We’d find something in a movie, and then try to connect it with one scene in our film; we had these references later when shooting. For us, it was good to match and connect what we were doing with these influences because, sometimes, two people will talk and think they’re talking about the same thing but they’re not (laughter). We were watching Nanni Moretti and Kiarostami. This time, I still had a big folder of screenshots and images and quotes, but I was not going back there to reuse it, at least not like how we did before. Also, I was doing that alone, and it was just something to feed my brain and my heart. Later, it would appear in something that we’d done, but it wasn’t as conscious as before. The things you love always reappear in your films.
This time around, there were things beyond films. There was literature. Before I was about to start shooting, which was going to be on a Monday, I went to play football on Sunday night. I didn’t break my leg but there was an accident and I had to stay home for two months. I always wanted to read [Miguel de] Cervantes but never managed to read anything. When I read Don Quixote… well, when you read something with so many ideas and forms, it really changes you. I see it now as a happy accident, and this accident also gave me a calmness and a lot of time to think. When a doctor tells you to stay home for two months and not to move, people won’t ask you to do stuff and you don’t feel bad about not being active. You can rest. These two months were very important because beyond the reading, it also meant watching a lot of films and a lot more time to think, at least in a calm way.
I wanted to ask about the use of sound and music in the film. When I went into the film, I was curious about how it’d differ from Let The Summer Never Come Again, and the most notable thing to me was how Dry Leaf’s sound isn’t coming from the phone itself. The sound is a lot higher quality. What happens, then, is that it shapes the reality of the images in a different way; you start to realize that you don’t need complete clarity of image because the sound grants you permission in this way. Can you talk about how you approached the sound?
When I started to film Let the Summer Never Come Again, a friend of mine here in Tbilisi came to visit me and he proposed to record sound. He was here for two weeks and then I made some synchronizations and it was clear that, especially in a city, it would take too long with the sound recording. And I had a feeling it wasn’t needed. I wanted things to go faster; I didn’t want to say, “Okay, we’re filming, we need the sound.” It was also clear that this very clear sound didn’t work with the image. I also knew with the film that I wouldn’t be able to work with a sound designer afterwards and I would have to do it myself, so there was no real possibility to make changes to this recorded sound. That’s when I completely gave up and decided to use the sound that the phone was recording. I think it was a good decision for that because the phone also has an interesting sound.
This time, as we traveled and had time to be in fields and forests, we wanted to talk with people and really understand what they were saying. There was also this interest to see if we could find the right tone. We wanted to find a way to see what could match the image. It’s also not the most perfect recording because sometimes I’d forget to say that we were recording—a lot of times we were just walking around. We didn’t have boom mics and there were other limitations. There was a lot that happened in the sound design and mixing, too. How much do we clean it? How many details do we add? We recorded sound from very far for certain shots, so we had this ambience but not a lot of detail. We had this question about whether or not we should hear the engine of a car. There were a lot of discussions, and at some point we found the right tone and then we were able to follow it.
How did you know when tone was right? Or was it more of a gut feeling? You have this recorded sound, but then that’s interspersed with your brother’s music. It’s cool to see how passages from Giorgi’s album, Forests, Tales, Cities, Forests (2025), make their way into the film. How do you balance these sounds with the more professionally recorded music?
My brother was not only doing music but the sound, so he was there. And this music we used later in the film, he was making that during these same travels. The music was inspired by these travels, so it made sense to use it. It was initially there just as a template, but then I got so used to it that I wanted to keep it.
I was also curious about how Levani’s voice sounds in the film. When we hear him, it sounds like his voice is kind of closer to the microphone. It felt really interesting to hear his presence more strongly given he’s this invisible character.
We were thinking about how detailed his presence should be and about how he should talk. We tried a lot of things. We were wondering if we should hear their footsteps or clothes or if we should hear them breathe. There are so many things you can do to make someone part of this reality, but I had this feeling that I may want to have the invisible characters again in future films. I liked the idea of having it done here very simply, where the narrator is just telling us that he is there. I didn’t want to exaggerate it with anything or have all these ticks. That can be for the future.
Are there any memorable stories you have from all the traveling you did and with all the people you met?
The most emotional thing was to go around and meet people, these animals, and these places, and then to leave. It’s a strange way of living. You go somewhere and get close with someone but you are on this mission of filming, so you have to continue. There was nothing extraordinary that happened to us, but for all of us, every day was unbearably emotional. We were meeting something or someone that was very precious; it was a very hard experience. I always get sad when I meet someone I like because I think the experience of leaving gives you this idea that this person or creature will have hard times. We know that everyone experiences tough things, so it felt like we were wind—we would come and go, and we would only see a little bit of their beauty.
To clarify, you get sad because you know everybody is going to face hardships in life?
The biography of every human is filled with tough moments. I think it’s a big combination of things. Even if you forget about whether it will be tough or good or bad, there will still be a lot of emotions when you leave. It’s hard to bear all of it.
Do you feel like meeting these different people was similar to how you feel when going to those protests? Are the emotions that you feel similar?
I haven’t thought about this before. There are similarities and differences. We meet every day for reasons that we don’t want to exist. And when I go on these travels, it makes me uncomfortable that I’m intervening on the everyday lives of these people and I don’t know what it was like for them before or after.
Did you feel emotional after seeing these football fields that no longer exist?
Not directly. The damage you see is bigger than the football fields. The injustice is just a representation of it on a smaller scale. If kids are in a village, they’ll find a place to play, but if you go to a village and there aren’t any kids anymore because they all left to the city, then there’s no sense for a football stadium.
There’s that line near the end of the film where you talk about the football fields being gone and how the kids can play anywhere. There’s this spirit of making do with what you can. And I was thinking about that in relation to what you said about the protests.
Optimism is a duty. When you’re creating something, when you’re making a film, you’re saying that it makes sense to do so, that you see some sort of future—otherwise, you wouldn’t make it. If you really create something, it’s your duty to at least pretend that you have some hope.
Is that a primary objective of Dry Leaf, to provide hope?
I really don’t know. And it’s also a really strange subject and also ethically problematic. You can say that you are hopeful but then there are things happening where it doesn’t make any sense. They can just seem like words. But I have this feeling that if you keep doing things, it should make some sense to you that you’re doing them, no?
What was the decision behind having Dry Leaf split into two parts?
It’s a tool to relate it to the cinematic form. I like giving shapes and borders or forms to this material, which can feel formless because it’s repetitious. I felt it’d be good to have some sort of order beyond just a beginning and end.
You have the scene with the Georgian polyphonic singing. Is there anything about Georgian polyphony you find interesting? And this isn’t to say that you were relating the form of that music to the form of your film.
This musicality shapes you when you live with it, when you hear it throughout your whole life. It’s a way of living, it’s about togetherness and inclusion. It wasn’t really planned that I would be at this place and that I’d record these songs. I can speculate about the music, but it’s too big a subject—I’d be too imprecise. It defines so much of our being and our understanding of the world—every time you include it in a film, it requires a lot of decision-making. Here, I got the feeling that it was something in the background and not some sort of soundtrack or a sort of music that’d represent the film. It was there in the background with the dialogue; we had some film and we were like, let’s give some time to this sound, to preserve it somehow.
I wanted to ask this earlier, but what was the reason behind having this gay romance at the center of Let the Summer Never Come Again?
The year before I filmed, there was something horrible that happened where they tried to organize some sort of pride event in the center of Tbilisi and they had a really big clash with the conservative people. It was one of the darkest days of our contemporary history. For me, it was a way of supporting this idea that love is love. I was very angry.
Do you have a complicated relationship with Christianity and how it impacts culture in Georgia?
I don’t have problems with it generally, but there are often problems when an institution will present their ideas and it’ll be more than we need. And it’ll be a big part of politics, too, which is wrong.
There’s a question I end all my interviews with and I wanted to ask it to you. Do you mind sharing one thing you love about yourself?
How I play football. You’d love to have a teammate like me—I make good passes, and I love giving the ball away to my teammates.
So you’re okay with not being the star?
Playmakers can be stars too.
Alexandre Koberidze’s Dry Leaf is screening as part of TIFF’s Wavelengths program.
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