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Dea Kulumbegashvili Historia

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On The Right Side of …. Dea Kulumbegashvili’s Wins Coin for Sophomore Project “Historia”

On The Right Side of …. Dea Kulumbegashvili’s Wins Coin for Sophomore Project “Historia”

Up there with 21st Century masterwork debuts in the likes of Steve McQueen’s Hunger and László Nemes’ Son of Saul, we find Georgian 2020 entry Beginning. We’re learning that filmmaker Dea Kulumbegashvili has won some precious coin to continue developing what will likely turn out to be her sophomore film project. THR reports that Kulumbegashvili is a joint winner of the 2022 Baumi Script Development Award for her treatment on Historia – it follows a female obstetrician in a rural part of Georgia who performs illegal abortions.

The obstetrician Nina is working in a rural Georgian hospital where contraception and abortion are not accepted. But Nina – “a fallen angel” – does what no one else is prepared to do. She risks her own life by performing illegal abortions for women who ask for her help. Dea Kulumbegashvili creates a unique world of poetry in her feature film project “Historia”. The mixture of realism and fantasy elements gives her idea a very special kind of approach. Ildikó Enyedi headed the jury. Previous winners in the six editions past include Omar El Zohairy, Shahrbanoo Sadat and Soudade Kaadan.

In our books, if it weren’t for the pandemic, Kulumbegashvili might have been among the rare filmmakers to break into the Cannes Film Fest’s competition section with their debut feature – the Cannes Label film ended up cleaning house at the San Sebastián Film Festival a couple of months later – landing four awards.

Also worth mentioning, Visar Morina is a co-winner for the prize money. The Sundance preemed Exil (read review) is working on Hatixhe and Shaban, which looks at a family in rural Kosovo, which loses its farm and is forced to move to the city to earn a living.

Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist and critic at IONCINEMA.com (founded in 2000). Eric is a regular at Sundance, Cannes and TIFF. He has a BFA in Film Studies at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013 he served as a Narrative Competition Jury Member at the SXSW Film Festival. He was an associate producer on Mark Jackson's This Teacher (2018 LA Film Festival, 2018 BFI London). In 2022 he served as a New Flesh Comp for Best First Feature at the 2022 Fantasia Intl. Film Festival. Current top films for 2022 include Tár (Todd Field), All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen), Aftersun (Charlotte Wells).

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