Georgian helmer Alexandre Koberidze, in Locarno with his competition entry “Dry Leaf,” is re-teaming with Leipzig and Berlin-based New Matter Films on his next project, “Bilingual,” a romantic mystery drama inspired by the Pet Shop Boys’ 1996 album of the same name.
The German-French co-production will follow two story arcs, one set in France, the other in Georgia, following two women who are being sought in the respective countries.
“If you see the film, I guess you would never think of the Pet Shop Boys, but somehow the mood of the film comes from this music,” Koberidze says.
“It’s a film in two parts. One is set in France and is more of a criminal-detective story. The second part is in Georgia. It also has a kind of detective narrative but is more of a romantic story. And these two stories, in a very little way, melt into each other.”
With the script already finished and funding secured from both the German Federal Film Board (FFA) and the Franco-German film funding commission (via the FFA and France’s CNC), Koberidze is aiming to shoot the film next year. New Matter Films and France’s Tripode Productions are producing.
It will be a very different and much bigger project than “Dry Leaf,” Koberidze adds.
His latest film is a meditative road movie set in Georgia, where a worried father embarks on a trip to find his daughter after she left a letter asking not to be found.
A sports photographer, Lisa had planned to take pictures of rural soccer fields around the country, so it is to these remote villages that her father Irakli sets off in the hope of finding her.
The film, which follows Koberidze’s award-winning 2021 Berlin competition title “What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?” accompanies Irakli and Levani, Lisa’s friend and colleague, as they travel across the country, retracing her steps through quiet villages, meeting kind strangers, and speaking with children playing soccer along the way.
Alexandre Koberidze/New Matter Films
The meandering trip is reflected in the film’s title, a Brazilian soccer term that refers to a type of free kick, in which the ball is struck with no spin, causing it to fly unpredictably, like a dry leaf falling from a tree.
It also describes the journey of both the characters and the making of the film itself, which proved a long process, Koberidze explains. He began writing it in 2021 and shot it in two blocks over the following two years.
“Dry Leaf” is very much a family affair: the director’s father, David Koberidze, plays Irakli, and brother Giorgi Koberidze composed the music for the film and also oversaw sound design.
“He’s a composer, and when I started to edit it became clear that the music would become a very important part of the film. That’s when I called him and I told him, ‘It’s not just that I’m making a film and you have to make music for it. You have to see it as your own work as well, because this film won’t live without music.”
As in his previous film, soccer is an important element in the story and in the lives of the characters.
“I like football and when I think about my childhood, these improvised little football fields are more or less the first kind of common thing which kids are doing together because it’s super simple: you just put stones there. But somehow you have to make it in a group; you have to have this desire, and then you have to decide, okay, how wide is it? Which stones do we take? And then it becomes this kind of magical place. All the magic happens there, and so much passion and tears and joy.
“I remembered from my childhood how different all these places were: sometimes it’s stones, sometimes it is sticks, sometimes it’s just bags. That was like my fantasy: to see how these places are made in different areas of the country.”
Making the film was a similar journey as that taken by the movie’s characters, arriving in remote villages and similarly asking random people for the way to the local soccer field.
As with his first feature, 2017’s “Let The Summer Never Come Again,” Koberidze shot “Dry Leaf” on his Sony Ericsson W595, which he has used since 2009. “It became a very natural visual because it’s kind of daily routine for me that I take pictures and videos with this camera,” he adds, noting that it’s almost like keeping a visual diary.
Despite capturing Georgia’s enchanting natural landscapes, lush rolling hills and sunny summer skies, Koberidze still sought to avoid depicting too much of the country’s scenic beauty and the “super spectacular” vistas that characterize the land. “There were some regions we didn’t visit because some places look too exotic. I had this fear that it could end up like something from the Discovery Channel.”
Heretic is handling world sales for “Dry Leaf.”
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