Synopsis
Nina, an OB-GYN, faces accusations after a newborn's death. Her life undergoes scrutiny during investigation. She persists in her medical duties, determined to provide care others hesitate to offer, despite the risks.
Nina, an OB-GYN, faces accusations after a newborn's death. Her life undergoes scrutiny during investigation. She persists in her medical duties, determined to provide care others hesitate to offer, despite the risks.
David Zerat Ilan Amouyal Luca Guadagnino Francesco Melzi d'Eril Gabriele Bebe Moratti Alexandra Rossi Archil Gelovani Sergey Yahontov Livio Strazzera Jan Pastori
Raffaella Viscardi Christian Vesper Malcom Pagani Marco Colombo Moreno Zani Giovanni Corrado Steven Darty Adrien Dassault Federico Marchetti
David Khubua Giorgi Ustarashvili Levan Meparidze Davit Andguladze Iasha Gelashvili Mamkuka Kvarchkhava Ituka Bright Laka
Beso Kacharava Tina Laschke Lars Ginzel Alexander Sanikidze Biko Gogaladze Rati Chkhetiani Levan Tserediani George Murgulia Anastasiia Nasonkina Giorgi Lekishvili Patrick Veigel Zezva Pochkhidze
Frenesy Film First Picture MeMo Films Independent Film Project ARTE France Cinéma 3 Marys Entertainment Tenderstories Adler Entertainment
Those Who Find Me, 四月勿語, Kwiecień, Απρίλης, 4월, 四月, Balandį, Aprill, Апрель, Nisan
There isn’t a horror director alive who wouldn’t kill to create frames as tense, ominous, and viscerally captivating as those of Georgian filmmaker Dea Kulumbegashvili, who applies her talents toward elemental character studies about rural women suffering under the yoke of patriarchy at the foot of the Caucasus Mountains.
Her debut feature, 2020’s masterful “Beginning,” tells the story of a disillusioned Jehovah’s Witness who starts to unravel after her church is firebombed by extremists in the very first shot, a static tableau held for several minutes before its Haneke-like remove is shattered with a molotov cocktail. Kulumbegashvili’s even more accomplished and terrifying follow-up “April” — which concerns a hospital obstetrician whose career is put at risk when a rare stillbirth…
Beautiful to look at, brutally paced. Conceptually, April is a brilliant film (the crippling loneliness of a taboo, and therefore thankless, job; the undiscussed ethical grey areas of abortion and bodily autonomy. etc.). But it sacrifices much of these great ideas in pursuit of visual immersion - which ironically pulls the viewer right out of the film (several people walked out of my already sparsely populated screening). I would love to have learned more about our protagonist Nina and her clandestine, Haneke-esque sex life, or more about the rising aggression of men in the village as they persecute Nina for her perceived moral violations against their wives and daughters. But every frame is about three full minutes too long, so…
Bela Tarr meets Cristian Mungiu, and they take a sip of Lars von Trier's red wine. Georgia's patriarchal structures get a baseball bat up their arses. "don't you fuck with morality, bitches!" it yells through the wide lensed spaces of emptiness. reciprocal Kulumbegashvili fucks with your patience meanwhile.
some images are fully mental, the final one might be the most beautiful of the festival - can't remember ever having seen one that has 8 levels of horizon and colors in one celluloid painting.
Heavy Chantal Akerman vibes in this exceptionally gorgeously shot pro-abortion film.
A pro-abortion drama that manifests the weight of the loneliness that comes from performing a thankless, traumatizing job into a withered husk creature, empty space, devastating attempts at connection and a cacophonous soundscape. Absolutely flattened by this one. Major.
“French cinema is starting to ‘blob’ immigration,” wrote Serge Daney, “to ‘naturalize’ it, to make it a theme like any other.” It’s of course not Kulumbegashvili’s fault that this film won’t be shown in Georgia, and that’s part of her point, but there is something disheartening about an international film culture that means a director goes abroad to equip themselves with an American MFA, returns armed with the slender means of the twenty-first century serious festival film — academy ratio, static camera, long takes, refusal of découpage, artfully off-kilter framing, “supernatural” element amid low-key naturalism — to make a film about the awful state of things at home, and then takes it to Venice with Luca Guadagnino’s support (the hag…
Fuck
An entirely unpleasant and stressful viewing; a surrealist prologue is the only introduction you get before you’re violently thrown into the world of these characters. And fuck is it ever a cruel one, overflowing with 10-15 minute takes that (quite often) feature characters staring directly into the camera lens, further unravelling any mental protection you could’ve walked into this movie with. It’s almost as if at any moment, one of them would say: “you’re seeing this, right? Please tell me you’re seeing this”—- I’ve never spent so much time in an auditorium desperately trying to escape the eye-sight of the characters.
An effortlessly courageous work that will, very sadly, probably never see proper distribution because of just how brave…
April is bleak and difficult. It's one of the most uncomfortable experiences I've had in a cinema, filled with numbing scenes of pain that the film lingers on. It features both a stillbirth and an abortion, shown unflinchingly. Yet April is more than just these moments. It is about a tough week, of a woman doing important work over a few days as things seem to unravel. The point seems to be that these unfortunate realities exist and someone has to be there for them. The story is specifically about female suffering, of abuse and the physical consequences of childbearing. Our lead is left adrift and alone in her work and life, with the camerawork distancing her by placing her…
O aborto ilegal vai continuar acontecendo, quer você queira ou não, e, num mundo que condena mais do que aceita uma alternativa diferente, existem essas pessoas que ainda resistem nas sombras, Nina, mesmo trabalhando com partos, também esconde seu outro lado ilegal para continuar ajudando mulheres que desejam fazer um aborto, como nessa pequena cidade rural na Geórgia, tudo precisa ser ainda mais escondido, sua situação se transforma em um segredo bastante íntimo, porém, as coisas se tornam críticas depois de um certo incidente causa a raiva de um homem que sabe dos seus segredos. Por trás do surrealismo aterrorizante em April, acompanhamos um realismo ainda mais brutal, como se a obra estivesse passando por um tipo de metamorfose e…
Storm clouds darken fields of rapeseed and livestock shrink from torchlight in Dea Kulumbegashvili’s unblinking second feature, named after the cruelest month. Resolutely formalist in its depiction of moral courage, APRIL reckons with male violence and salvific endings in the season of new life.
Now streaming exclusively on MUBI in Latin America, Germany, Turkey, India, and Canada, and from August 29 in Australia.
don't think this all comes together in the end but with a week's hindsight I am still quite moved and unnerved by what's here