Perhaps the landmark sophomore feature of 2024, Georgian filmmaker Dea Kulumbegashvili has found a safe space in the U.S. via newish distributor Metrograph Pictures who acquired the North American rights to the Venice Special Jury Prize winner. Hailed as the best film (tied alongside The Brutalist) to come out of Venice by our chief film critic Nicholas Bell who praised (read our 4-star review) April for how it “drifts into stagnation, every visual moment is feeding into the themes of the film, including the multiple escapes into the mercurial nature of spring, rife with blossoming fertility but also presenting a fragile landscape vulnerable to destruction. The final frames reach a thematic blend of perfection, as Nina is questioned beneath a wall clock, ticking endlessly to suggest she’s potentially reached the inevitable fate she cannot escape.” Metrograph Pictures will release the film in theaters next year. The film won in Hamburg Film Festival yesterday and claimed the Zabaltegi-Tabakalera Award in San Sebastian.
The film follows Nina, a skilled obstetrician at a maternity hospital in Eastern Georgia. After a difficult delivery, an infant dies and the grief-stricken father demands an inquiry into her methods. The resulting scrutiny threatens to bring to light Nina’s secret side job—driving through the stunningly beautiful countryside to the village homes of pregnant girls and women to provide unsanctioned abortions—and to destroy the work that is the only source of meaning in her life.
