News

Heretic has acquired world sales rights to Georgian filmmaker Alexandre Koberidze’s “Dry Leaf” ahead of its world premiere in the International Competition at the Locarno Film Festival.

The director’s latest tells the story of sports photographer Lisa, who suddenly vanishes without a trace while photographing rural soccer stadiums in villages across Georgia. Setting out with the woman’s mysterious best friend, her father, Irakli, embarks on a journey to find her.

Variety has been given exclusive access to the film’s trailer:

Taking its name from a 1950s soccer technique introduced by Brazilian footballer Didi, where the ball’s unpredictable flight mimics a falling leaf drifting in the wind, “Dry Leaf” uses that central metaphor to explore themes of uncertainty, fate and surrender, as Koberidze explains in a director’s statement provided to Variety.

“Try to remember a leaf falling from above — how it changes direction and speed,...

Movies can truly be anything, and the beauty of Alexandre Koberidze’s “What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?” is how it reminds us of that — time and again — during almost every one of its meandering 150 minutes.

Nevertheless, a crucial scene towards the beginning stands out for the way it epitomizes that magic. A soccer player named Giorgi (Giorgi Ambroladze) and a knowledgeable young pharmacist named Lisa (Ani Karseladze) have just enjoyed an extremely Lanthimos-esque meet-cute along the banks of the Rioni River in the ancient Georgian city of Kutaisi; we’ve only seen them interact from the knees down or through nighttime long shots lensed from so far away that these characters have been reduced to specks of light in the darkness, but the film’s affectless narrator (voiced by Koberidze himself) assures us of their shared affections. Alas, they are both about to be cursed as well,...

"The wind wanted to tell her that Lisa wouldn't be the only one to wake up with different looks the next day..." Mubi has unveiled an official trailer for an acclaimed indie film from Georgia titled What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?, which is an evocative title for this charming film about a young woman longing for a romantic encounter. It originally premiered at the 2021 Berlin Film Festival earlier this year, and many critics flipped for it. The film next plays at the New York, Vancouver, London, and Chicago Film Festivals this fall. A chance encounter on a street corner has Lisa and Giorgi fall in love at first sight, but an evil spell is cast on them. Will they ever meet again? This slow cinema feature is described as "an irresistibly radiant romantic fable from Alexandre Koberidze." Starring Ani Karseladze, Giorgi Bochorishvili, and Vakhtang Panchulidze.

What did the drain pipe, the security camera, and the sapling say to the girl when she crossed the road? This is the set up, not of some shitty joke, but of a key scene of dramatic conflict in Aleksandre Koberidze’s What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?. At the beginning of the film, Lisa (Oliko Barbakadze) and Giorgi (Giorgi Ambroladze) have an odd meet cute in the streets of the Georgian city of Kutaisi. They fall in love at first sight, arrange to meet at a cafe the next day, and forget to ask each others’ names. As Lisa heads home, the pipe, camera, and sapling decide to warn her of encroaching danger. As recounted to us by a narrator (voiced by director Aleksandre Koberidze), they tell Lisa that an evil eye observed her meeting with Giorgi and has cursed them. The next day, she...

How often does the cosmos grant us love at first sight? What if you were to be given such an exceptional gift, derived from an impossible encounter in the middle of the street, only for it to be teasingly snatched away? You may think it far from likely, but this is precisely what happens to Giorgi (Giorgi Bochorishvili), and Lisa (Ani Karseladze) in “What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?

Continue reading ‘What Do We See When We Look At The Sky?’: Alexandre Koberidze Creates A Compelling Fable From The Putty Of Love [Berlin Review] at The Playlist.

A heartening sign of the kind of movie—idiosyncratic, surprising, youthful, romantic—that this year's Berlinale has chosen to spotlight in the main competition, Alexandre Koberidze’s second film, What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? is a true delight. A substantial yet effortless work, and only the second film by Koberdize, following his audacious four-hour debut, Let the Summer Never Come Again, it confirms the Georgian director as a major talent.Taking place in the sun-drenched city of Kutaisi along the roaring Rioni River, it tells a fable of a meet-cute between a boy and girl, Giorgi (Giorgi Ambroladze) and Lisa (Ani Karseladze), who immediately feel the pull of love, but for whom the evil eye will disrupt their union. Each wakes up the day of their first date looking completely different, and bereft of their most valuable knowledge. Befuddled and lost in their new identities,...

“Attention!” bawls an onscreen title, or rather its subtitle, given that the original is written in Georgia’s lovely curly alphabet. “Dear Audience, please close your eyes at the first signal.” Alexandre Koberidze, writer-director-narrator of the marvellous, mischievous “What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?” probably doesn’t expect anyone to obey as he effects his story’s central switcheroo, like a kid not great at magic asking mom to look away from the handkerchiefs he’s stuffing up his sleeve. But that’s not the point.

Instead, the command, along with other self-conscious flourishes like the direct-address voiceover, the creaky, obviously manual zooms and the sudden, interruptive digressions about global catastrophe and far-off forest fires, reminds us of ourselves in relation to the film, that we are active participants in the creation of this (or any) work of cinema. And given how much this movie loves the movies,...

This year’s Berlin International Film Festival will look a bit different this year, with a virtual edition taking place March 1-5 for industry and press, then a public, in-person edition kicking off in June.

The complete lineup has now been unveiled, including Céline Sciamma’s highly-anticipated Portrait of a Lady on Fire follow-up Petite Maman, a surprise new Hong Sang-soo feature, the latest work from Ryūsuke Hamaguchi, along with new projects by Radu Jude, Xavier Beauvois, Dominik Graf, Pietro Marcello, Ramon Zürcher & Silvan Zürcher, and more.

Check out each section below.

Competition Tiles

“Albatros” (Drift Away)

France

by Xavier Beauvois

with Jérémie Renier, Marie-Julie Maille, Victor Belmondo

“Babardeală cu buclucsau porno balamuc” (Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn)

Romania/Luxemburg/Croatia/Czech Republic

by Radu Jude

with Katia Pascariu, Claudia Ieremia, Olimpia Mălai

“Fabian oder Der Gang vor die Hunde” (Fabian – Going to the Dogs)

Germany

by Dominik Graf

with Tom Schilling,...

The Georgian director’s sophomore feature will be a romantic tragicomedy. Georgian filmmaker Alexandre Koberidze, known for his debut feature Let the Summer Never Come Again, which won the Grand Prix of the International Competition at the 2017 edition of Fid Marseille, is working on his highly anticipated sophomore feature, Wind Has Blown. The film will mark the director’s graduation from the German Academy of Film and Television (Dffb). Described by Koberidze as a “romantic tragicomedy with documentary and magic cinematic elements,” Wind Has Blown will centre on Lisa and Giorgi, who accidentally meet on the street and instantly fall in love. In the heat of the moment, they forget to ask each other’s names but set a time and place for meeting the following day. Yet an unnoticed witness to the moment curses them and, the next day, Lisa and Giorgi wake up with completely changed appearances. Giorgi Bochorishvili,...