One of the brighter notes in world cinema circa year one of the pandemic, Dea Kulumbegashvili‘s directorial debut (an official entry for Georgia for the 2021 Oscars) which our Nicholas Bell describes as “a grueling masterwork which oscillates between strident peaks of frustration and anxiety, meditation and poetics,” managed to make quite the statement on the film festival circuit.

Selected as a Cannes Label selection (if included in the official competition in a regular year it would have been one of the rare film debuts in the running for the Palme d’Or), Beginning technically began it’s film festival tour at TIFF (winner of the FIPRESCI award) to move onto sweep a quartet of awards at San Sebastián and would close out the year with a pair of showings at NYFF and an appointment on the Croisette for what would be a three-day physical event. I had the chance to interview the filmmaker prior to NYFF and discuss the film’s non-verbal cues, notions of ownership, framing of her players, and the creative collaboration with actor/producer/writer Rati Oneli.