Jury Prize at the 81st Venice Film Festival: APRIL by Déa Kulumbegashvili

by Luigi Vitali

Kulumbegashvili’s second feature continues her singular, radical approach—a formalist portrait of resistance and erasure.

This is a 2-hour and 15-minute long auteur film about a Georgian obstetrician who provides illegal abortions in rural Georgia. Strongly characterised by a rigorously formalist style with static shots, where nothing seems to happen for up to 10 minutes, and filmed in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio, the film is excruciatingly slow but masterfully executed. The long subjective takes, vast landscapes, and extended static frames, where stretched-out dialogues often occur off-screen, have the power to become captivating, hypnotic, and beautiful in a way that only Déa Kulumbegashvili can achieve.

We follow this doctor—who is risking her career and reputation to help young women terminate pregnancies—leading a solitary life between the hospital and remote villages. She has fleeting sexual encounters with local peasants while enduring harassment from male colleagues, mistreatment from surly patients, and the pervasive misogyny and violent masculinity that surrounds her. Her routine is precise and quiet, yet charged with tension. The scenes are often devoid of music, making the ambient sounds of wind, breath, footsteps, and animal calls part of the film’s emotional architecture.

The contrast is between her contemporary view and professional life—working in a modern hospital that uses advanced medical techniques and rigorous methods—with a context where outdated male attitudes persist, leaving women’s bodies still at the mercy of men. The character’s struggle is a haunting reflection on sexuality and transgression, as well as a merciless commentary on Georgian society and its incomplete, illusory modernity. In Georgia, while abortion is officially legal, it remains largely out of reach due to deep-rooted religious and cultural stigma, especially in rural areas where the Orthodox Church’s influence prevails. This atmosphere of fear extends to birth control, as highlighted by a scene where a young woman nervously accepts pills in secrecy. Another sequence shows a group of men gathered outside a church, discussing the doctor’s actions with a mix of suspicion and moral judgment, underlining how control over female bodies is socially enforced through informal, patriarchal policing.

The protagonist’s lack of emotional expression becomes a form of resistance. She remains composed even under duress, refusing to react in ways that might allow others to reassert control. This emotional opacity destabilises the viewer’s expectations and denies easy identification or catharsis. Her silence, as much as her actions, becomes political. The tension between visibility and erasure runs through the film: women’s suffering is present but peripheral, often occurring outside the frame or in indirect ways, while men dominate the visible and spoken sphere.

The film’s strength lies in its subject matter, the hostility of its form, and its raw, unflinching, and gruelling content. Though its heavy auteurism can prove demanding, the film undeniably proves Déa Kulumbegashvili’s mastery. The movie is also produced by Luca Guadagnino, who met the director at the San Sebastián Film Festival in 2020. At the time, Guadagnino presided over the jury that awarded all four major prizes, including Best Director and Best Screenplay, to the Georgian filmmaker for her debut, Beginning. Their collaboration here feels like a continuation of that recognition, giving Kulumbegashvili the resources and support to push her visual language further without compromise.

With a film as unapologetically challenging as this, Déa Kulumbegashvili compels us to confront beauty and pain with the same unrelenting intensity and discomfort her protagonist endures. This is a remarkable work, where her unwavering commitment to an uncompromising vision delivers a profoundly powerful experience. It is not interested in offering resolution or redemption. It is about holding a position, enduring, and refusing to look away. This is cinema at its finest.