Shot on an old Ericsson cellphone DRY LEAF looks like a 43rd VHS genration dupe of someone's home movies. The film is the story of a man looking for his missing daughter and stopping at every football pitch that he runs across. Running an eternal 186 minutes the film is an endurance test to see if one can remain awake.
Apologies for being snarky, but this is the sort of film that resulted in art house films becoming jokes in the 1960's and 70's, being self indulgent and full of meaning. Don't get me wrong I like art house films but at the same time there is a point where a filmmaker needs to really decide if he needs to go on past the point of sleep. I really think that half this film could be removed with no loss to the meaning.
While the film is screening as part of the Currents section of the NYFF, which used to be the Avant Garde/ experimental section, you know its going to be edgey, or thinks it is. The truth of the matter is that if it wasn't visually degraded this film probably wouldn't have been picked up since the visual choice of how its shot confuses many programmers into thinking a film is more important than it is.
DRY LEAF is important, as a new cinematic sleep aid.
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