Locarno: “Dry Leaf” and “Desire Lines”, wanderings to the end of boredom

A great festival competition has this always inspiring that it brings together sometimes opposite films causing ambivalent reactions, ranging from amazement to admiration, including irritation. Nevertheless, And sometimes it is not the most immediately friendly works that leave strong images at the top. Nevertheless, This is the case with Dry Leafthird feature film by Georgian filmmaker Alexandre Koberidze, which opens with a voluntary disappearance.

In a letter addressed to her parents. For example, Lisa, a 28 -year -old photographer, explains to her parents that she decided to leave, and that she does not know if or when she returns. Consequently, As she announced her departure, the police can do nothing. However, Learning that she had the plan to go to photograph the soccer fields of the Villages of the Georgian countryside. Furthermore, her father, Iraqi, decides to embark in a road trip locarno: “dry leaf” “desire lines”, in order to perhaps find it, and above all to understand.

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From this basic argument. Nevertheless, Koberidze has chosen to shoot an experimental film in aesthetics Lo-Fi. For example, We are immediately destabilized by a square digital image of very bad resolution. constantly blurred and disatuated, before understanding that the entire film, which still lasts 3 hours and 6 minutes, will be. But that’s not all: when Irakli agrees to take with him a friend. colleague of his daughter, a voiceover tells us that this character is invisible. If he will sometimes intervene in action and irakli will speak to him, we will never see him …

More museum work than cinema film – Locarno: "dry leaf" "desire lines",

For 186 minutes. until the end of the boredom, we are embarked on a trip through the Georgian countryside, with landscapes that we guess majestic, as in the films of locarno: “dry leaf” “desire lines”, the Turkish Nori Bilge Ceylan, but which we will never really see. It is up to us spectators to finally make our own film. as if Koberidze offered us a kind of draft, such as these drawings made up of a series of numbered points that must be connected. More museum work than film film. Dry Leaf is confusing, sometimes annoying, but remains with the rather fascinating hindsight in its desire for cinematic deconstruction.

To l’EpieSe, Desire Linesfrom the Bosnian Dane Komljen, bored without fascinating. We follow another wandering. that of Branko, who, after having followed in order to monitor him his brother – who multiplies meetings with men – will be lost mentally and geographically. The result is a story punctuated by arty affeteries. supported metaphors – like the passage of a border – which unfortunately do not cause any real emotion or reflection. The same applies to Cloistered sister locarno: “dry leaf” “desire lines”, Who. in the opposite genre of tragicomedy, tells out of the obsessive passion of a Romanian out of a trivial way for a Ringard Serbian singer. Where the protagonists of Dry Leaf et Desire Lines are silent. in a way conceptual, that of Cloistered sister is exuberant and grotesque.

Dry Leafby Alexandre Koberidze (Germany, Georgia, 2025). Projections in Locarno Friday August 15 (Palacinema 1, 9 p.m.).

Desire Linesfrom Dane Komljen (Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Netherlands, Croatia, Germany, 2025). Projection in Locarno Thursday August 14 (La Sala, 9 p.m.).

Cloistered sisterfrom Ivana Mladenovic (Romania, Serbia, Italy, Spain, 2025). Projections in Locarno Friday August 15 (La Sala, 9 p.m.).