\n<\/p>\n
Dea Kulumbegashvili may be the most celebrated filmmaker to emerge in the past decade from Georgia, a nation of about 3.6 million people that was once part of the Soviet Union. Her debut, \u201cBeginning\u201d (2020), was her country\u2019s submission for the best international feature Oscar in 2021, and her latest, \u201cApril,\u201d which opens in U.S. theaters on Friday, won the special jury prize<\/a> at the 2024 Venice Film Festival.<\/p>\n Yet Kulumbegashvili, who lives in Berlin, doesn\u2019t feel particularly welcome back home.<\/p>\n \u201cApril,\u201d which follows an obstetrician who performs abortions illegally, has not been screened in Georgia. \u201cIt has no distribution potential because no one wants to deal with something that would cause a problem with the authorities,\u201d Kulumbegashvili said in a video interview. <\/p>\n Though abortion is legal in Georgia for pregnancies under 12 weeks, the reality for women \u2014 especially those living outside the major cities \u2014 is complicated. A vast majority of Georgians are Orthodox Christians, and traditional ideas about gender roles and domesticity hold sway in most families.<\/p>\n The film was \u201cessentially shot in secret,\u201d Kulumbegashvili said. She did not seek domestic funding, instead relying on her producers \u2014 who included Luca Guadagnino, the Italian director of \u201cChallengers\u201d and \u201cCall Me by Your Name\u201d \u2014 to raise money from international sources.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Kulumbegashvili\u2019s grew up in Lagodekhi, a small town at the foot of the Caucasus Mountains, near the border with Azerbaijan; both \u201cBeginning\u201d and \u201cApril\u201d were shot there. Underage marriage is a continuing issue in the town, Kulumbegashvili said \u2014 as it is in the rest of the country<\/a>. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The director, now 39, remembered her childhood best friend getting married when she was 15. \u201cI recently rewatched a video recording of her wedding,\u201d she said, \u201cand even though everyone was having a great time, it was clearly a tragic thing.\u201d<\/p>\n The minimum legal age for marriage in Georgia is 18, but Kulumbegashvili said that the authorities often turned a blind eye to underage marriage, even if they involved bride abductions. About 14 percent of Georgian girls are married before they turn 18, according to the United Nations Population Fund<\/a>, and many marriages aren\u2019t officially registered.<\/p>\n When Kulumbegashvili was in Lagodekhi filming \u201cBeginning,\u201d which centers on the abused wife of a Jehovah\u2019s Witness leader, she met children from schools all over the surrounding region as part of an expansive street-casting process. The children had to be accompanied by a guardian, which allowed Kulumbegashvili to meet dozens of young mothers, who shared their experiences of raising families in poverty while being pressured to bear more children. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Those conversations spurred the concept for \u201cApril,\u201d whose production was also shaped by broader currents in Georgian politics.<\/p>\n Since taking power in 2013<\/a>, the country\u2019s governing Georgian Dream party has advanced an increasingly conservative, anti-Western agenda. Access to abortion, for instance, is now stifled by additional costs and bureaucratic obstacles such as a mandatory five-day waiting period after an initial radiology exam and multiple mandatory consultations with social workers and doctors.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n After parliamentary elections last October<\/a>, several new laws have gone into effect<\/a>, including severe restrictions on foreign funding for media and nongovernmental organizations \u2014 many of which provide educational resources and health services for working-class Georgians.<\/p>\n \u201cBasically, human rights are being diminished,\u201d Kulumbegashvili said.<\/p>\n The protagonist of \u201cApril,\u201d a gloomy yet gifted doctor named Nina, played by Ia Sukhitashvili, steps in where Georgia\u2019s state-run social and medical programs have failed. She works at a maternity clinic and moonlights as an abortionist, paying clandestine visits to rural women who can\u2019t afford a trip to Tbilisi, the capital. Many of her patients fear violent backlash from their fathers or husbands if their out-of-wedlock pregnancies \u2014 or unsanctioned abortions \u2014 were to become known.<\/p>\n Sukhitashvili said by email that she was disappointed that \u201cApril\u201d wouldn\u2019t be shown in Georgia. \u201cI know that if we were given the chance to show the film, it would have made people reflect on the issues it raises,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The film, which is composed of eerily static tableaus meant to emphasize Nina\u2019s solitude, isn\u2019t didactic. It doesn\u2019t break down the grim sociocultural context, but it does thrust the viewer into its folds.<\/p>\n Early on, the camera is perched above an operating table as a woman pushes out a stillborn baby. The scene feels shockingly direct for a reason: The patient and doctors aren\u2019t actors, and we are witnessing a real childbirth.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Several employees of the clinic where Kulumbegashvili filmed have known her since she was a child, a connection that helped cultivate trust. Sukhitashvili and Kulumbegashvili studied the clinic\u2019s operations for more than a year and developed a rapport with patients, one of whom, Kulumbegashvili said, came up with the idea to film the births.<\/p>\n Midway through the film, a tense and minimal abortion scene unfolds realistically in one long take, but it\u2019s just a performance. Like the birthing scenes, however, it demonstrates the vulnerability and strength of pregnant bodies in extremis.<\/p>\n The rest of \u201cApril\u201d is committed to visualizing Nina\u2019s spiritual turmoil in the face of \u201cgross patriarchal powers,\u201d said Guadagnino, who helped raise funds for the film.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Guadagnino was the jury president at the San Sebasti\u00e1n International Film Festival the year that \u201cBeginning\u201d won four awards, including best film, director and actress (for Sukhitashvili, in her first role with Kulumbegashvili). After signing on to produce \u201cApril,\u201d Guadagnino also enlisted Kulumbegashvili\u2019s regular cinematographer, Arseni Khachaturan, to shoot his vampire romance \u201cBones and All.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2024 in Guadagnino\u2019s native Italy, the government passed a law<\/a> allowing anti-abortion groups to play a role in family planning clinics, and in the United States, the reversal of Roe v. Wade has allowed some states to implement restrictions<\/a> on abortion. Guadagnino said that \u201cApril\u201d presents the suffering of those denied the right to choose, in \u201cfierce, metaphysical ways.\u201d<\/p>\n In Georgia, Kulumbegashvili said, that often means a sense of helplessness. \u201cPeople don\u2019t bother looking for help because they know that resources are limited and the authorities won\u2019t do anything,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cMaybe films don\u2019t matter in the grand scheme of things, but I like to think that the women and children who visited my set, who were so open and enthusiastic about being involved, were taking breaks from their regular lives,\u201d Kulumbegashvili said. \u201cMaybe they had never imagined how their lives could be different until then.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n