APRIL

Film Information

Winner of the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival, Kulumbegashvili’s follow-up to her acclaimed debut feature Beginning is anchored by Ia Sukhitashvili’s powerhouse performance as Nina, an obstetrician in rural Georgia who is accused of malpractice after delivering a stillborn baby. Nina is subsequently subjected to an investigation that threatens to expose her history of flaunting taboo by discreetly providing abortions, and finds herself struggling to bear up under the burden of condemnation from a community whose women desperately need her. Shot in precisely calibrated long takes that practically vibrate with tension by DP Arseni Khachaturan, who captures both the beauty and the ominous starkness of the Caucasus, with Matthew Herbert’s asynchronous score adding to the abiding air of anxious disorientation, Kulumbegashvili’s sophomore film invents a startlingly original audiovisual vocabulary to convey its visceral narrative of repression and resistance.