‘Beginning’ and ‘April’ director interview: ‘I make films to grasp the true beauty of human nature’

Dea Kulumbegashvili is just two films old but already she has been added to the ranks of the most sensational directors in world cinema. The Georgian filmmaker’s mastery in creating intense sensorial narratives that are felt as much as they are seen is evident in her feature debut Beginning (2020) as well as her second movie April (2024).

Both films star Ia Sukhitashvili. Cinematographer Arseni Khachaturan has shot the movies on 35mm film stock, creating mesmerising visual landscapes that throb with colour, texture, light and feeling.

In Beginning, Sukhitashvili plays Yana, the wife of a Jehovah’s Witness preacher who is deeply affected when extremists torch the group’s church. Yana’s growing distance from her husband, her attitude towards their son, and her retreat into herself are portrayed through lengthy takes, several silences and startling ellipses.

April is even more ambitious and transgressive than Beginning. The film follows Nina, an obstetrician who conducts illegal abortions, and who is accused of causing the death of one of her patients. An early graphic sequence of an actual birth is the first indication of April’s bold atmospherics. Nina’s experience is interspersed with sightings of a spectral figure – a woman with a withered body and heavy breathing.

Sound is as vital to Kulumbegashvili’s rigorous formalism as the images, she...

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