Two Georgian films, ‘Dry Leaf’ and ‘April’, have been named among the 50 best films of the year by the British Film Institute’s prestigious publication, ‘Sight and Sound’. The magazine, known for its influential “Greatest Films of All Time” poll conducted every decade since 1952, highlighted both works in its annual selection.
One of the recognized titles, ‘Dry Leaf’, funded by the Georgian National Film Center, comes from director Alexandre Koberidze, already well known for ‘What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?’. His new film, running 186 minutes and shot on an old mobile phone in heavily pixelated images, was described by Sight and Sound as an unexpectedly captivating achievement.
The magazine’s editors praised the film’s unusual visual approach and its surreal narrative: a father searching rural Georgia for his missing daughter, a photographer who had been documenting football fields. He is accompanied by an invisible companion whose presence is treated as entirely ordinary. Yet Sight and Sound argues that Koberidze’s film stands apart from any retro homage. Its pixelated imagery, they say, creates a look that ‘movies have never had,’ a daring aesthetic shaped not by nostalgia but by a distinctive dream-like imagination.
‘April’ follows a Georgian obstetrician whose professional life unravels after her reputation as someone who performs abortions draws scrutiny in a conservative rural community. As whispers grow into quiet hostility, she finds herself confronting moral, social and personal pressures that blur the lines between duty and accusation. Kulumbegashvili builds the story with an atmosphere of suffocating tension, unfolding against the stark beauty of Georgia’s countryside.
