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Georgian director Dea Kulumbegashvili’s second feature April world premieres in competition at the Venice Film Festival later this week, before heading to Toronto and New York.
The drama about a rural obstetrician-gynaecologist who performs illegal abortions for women in need, follows Kulumbegashvili’s breakthrough debut feature Beginning, starring Ia Sukhitashvili as the wife of a Jehovah’s Witness leader disillusioned with the patriarchal religious community.
Set in and around Kulumbegashvili’s hometown of Lagodekhi at the foot of the Greater Caucasus mountains, that film won San Sebastian’s Golden Shell for Best Film in 2020 and was also feted by TIFF and Tribeca among others, heralding the director as a talent to watch.
April sees Kulumbegashvili return to Lagodekhi and reunite with Sukhitashvili as well as producers Ilan Amouyal and David Zerat at Paris-based First Picture, who were joined by Luca Guardagnino (Frenesy), Francesco Melzi d’Eril, Gabriele Moratti, Alexandra Rossi at (Memo Films) and Archil Gelovani at Independent Film Project. Goodfellas is handling international sales.
Sukhitashvili stars as Nina, an obstetrician-gynaecologist at a provincial hospital serving a wide rural community, who finds herself the subject of internal investigation after a stillbirth on her watch. The inquiry brings Nina’s moral compass and professionalism under scrutiny amid rumors that she also performs illegal abortions.
As she deals with the fallout, the medic starts to reflect on her life, work and convictions as she continues to support women in backwater villages, living in poverty, with little access to education and contraception. Far from the cinematic cliché of a shady backstreet abortionist, a portrait of a solitary, conflicted but dedicated woman emerges.
April grew out of the development and pre-production process for Beginning, explains Kulumbegashvili.
“I was going from one village to another scouting for children. I really wanted them to be from these villages, rather than professional child actors,” she recounts.
In the process of the open casting, Kulumbegashvili also came into contact with the children’s mothers.
“I grew up there but had been away for a long time. It was a bit of shock for me because I realized that women of my age already had six, seven, eight children, and that many of the women could not read or write.”
The character of Nina gradually started to take shape in Kulumbegashvil’s mind as she travelled from village to village.
“They are amazing mothers but when you meet somebody in a village who has eight children and no electricity, washing machine or water, cannot read and write, and barely has enough money for food, you start to ask the question, ‘Was it her choice to have that many children?’,” she says.
Nina’s character also recalls Kulumbegashvili’s grandmother, an educationalist who travelled the local villages in Soviet times, working closely with the children of minority communities who had little access to education.
“She dedicated her entire life to working with these children and with their parents. She would teach the mothers to read and write first, so they would fully understand the importance of their children learning how to read and write… I used to go with her sometimes and it has been part of my life since I was a child.”
Kulumbegashvili embedded herself and Sukhitashvili in the local maternity ward as part of her screenwriting and development process and would also go on to film there, building a set in its courtyard.
“I went there to talk to the doctors about the character I wanted to create,” says Kulumbegashvili, explaining why she then asked Sukhitashvili to join her.
“I didn’t want to write the script and then just give it to her so she would act the character, I wanted her to embody the character. I really wanted her to be there as much as possible with me. She’s a mother of two children and a theater actress, so she couldn’t be there every day, but she was there almost every week.
“We started to attend births, when we were allowed… it was a process, because you can’t just go to the clinic and enter the maternity ward. You need to go through the process. Pregnant women would come in, we would talk to them, and we would kind of follow their pregnancies, and then they would allow us also to see how they would give birth.”
The other key part of the research was getting to know the medical staff and learning about their difficult working conditions.
“They have so much empathy. They’re so dedicated to their profession. It’s almost like there is no space for others in their life… they never really go home because they don’t have enough doctors. They’re terribly understaffed and constantly on the go, doing the rounds of these small medical rooms in the villages.”
The film has come to fruition just months after Georgia’s Ministry of Health introduced new restrictions to accessing abortions. With the government’s growing anti-abortion stance already bubbling in the background during development, Kulumbegashvili took the decision to not seek Georgian state film-funding.
“I decided not to apply to the film fund, because with the script that I had there would be questions which would concern not only me, but also people who were helping me,” she said. “I had this very serious conversation with my producers on how the only way to make the film was by avoiding getting any Georgian state financing.”
Kulumbegashvili says there will be a limited release in Georgia for the film, which she expects will spark anger in some quarters.
“There will be a public debate… There will be a huge critical response from the government. The church will not like it, and people will need to somehow denounce some people who are in the film. It’s totally fine with me. I understand that things might happen. I’m not in Georgia, and I don’t think I’m going to be there in the near-future… it’s a complex. It’s going to be a huge debate.”
One key concern is protecting the medical staff who contributed to her research for the film.
“It’s highly problematic. I’m still finding a way how to talk about these doctors who were incredibly generous and very helpful, and who really care,” she says.
Beyond the wider response to the film, Kulumbegashvili says the process of making the film has also been a deeply personal experience, heightened by the fact she gave birth to her first child in between the shoot and post-production.
“I had a C-section and when I was in the surgery room, I was just looking at the clock on the wall, thinking I have seen it so many times before… I still need to make sense of everything which was going through my head in that moment,” she says.
“It was complex. I’m very grateful to Venice Film Festival that they will premiere the film so the world will see it, but it will always remain a very intimate film for me and something which is very special for totally different reasons, which I cannot even talk about maybe so far.”
Watch a first clip of the film.
