With just two features under her belt, it has become clear that is better to compare Dea Kulumbegashvili’s work to an out-of-body experience complete with their levitational high than to any other films. In her debut “Beginning,” what could’ve been seen as a police procedural into the burning of a church became a harrowing search into the soul of the pastor’s wife (Ia Sukhitashvili) most shaken by the incident, and her follow-up “April,” which required a year spent in a maternity ward in her native Georgia to research, is both eerily familiar and intriguingly foreign all at once as it looks into the life of an obstetrician forced to live a double life in the conservative region where her skills are required by the local hospital where few others are qualified to work, but often take her out to the most rural parts of the countryside when she quietly performs abortions for women desperately in need.
Reunited with both her lead actress Sukhitashvili and cinematographer Arseni Khachaturan, the director again creates divines a remarkable view into the story in which the reality in front of Nina, the doctor, doesn’t necessary align with her perspective on it and more impressively considers the position of women who aren’t considered in a patriarchal society much beyond their physical selves. Often filmed from Nina’s point of view where the weight of rooms typically dominated by men can be fully felt and the space off-screen opens the mind to everything going through her head, “April” additionally introduces in a remarkably effective bit of surrealism with a ghostly figure that wanders around in the aftermath of a controversial delivery of a stillborn child that threatens to put the doctor’s career in jeopardy when the father of the deceased believes it was malpractice and an investigation could uncover what she does in her off-hours from the hospital, adding to a sense of dissociation.
Nina may feel as if she’s losing control over the situation and herself, questioning whether she ever even had any in the first place, but Kulumbegashvili shows extraordinary command over her craft when “April” is so thoroughly engaging, with every seeming discursion that the doctor experiences as she drives between her work at the hospital and the countryside only adding to the feeling of the extraordinary pressure that she’s under. However as the filmmaker describes, the harrowing drama is the end result of ongoing artistic experimentation and exploration with a trusted set of collaborators, perhaps well-equipped in part to tell stories of lonely individuals at the mercy of inherently flawed systems when a compassionate process and the connections she’s built behind the scenes lead to such powerful films. After “April” became the talk of the fall festival circuit last year with Kulumbegashvili sidelined for much of it following the birth of her first child, the sensational film is now starting its theatrical run in the U.S. and the writer/director generously spoke about the connection between her latest film and her precious one, her treasured collaboration with her lead actress Sukhiashvili, and why acknowledging failure is ultimately a part of success.
I do believe that this story was brought to me by the women who I already met when I was preparing for “Beginning,” who were mothers of some of the children acting in the film. I was thinking about it for quite a long time because I was thinking what kind of film is it? Whose point of view are we following? Who is the main character of the film? In Georgia, the situation around abortion has been evolving. For example in my family, my grandmother, my mother and I have totally different realities we’re facing in terms of legislation because my grandmother’s generation is the generation out of the war and they were very much encouraged to get an abortion if necessary and get back to work as soon as possible because they were rebuilding the country. There was zero stigma related to it and it was readily available for all women. Then it became illegal later on in the Soviet Union when my mother was growing up and for when I was growing up, it was a total mess with the legislation. Now it’s officially legal, but then actually it’s not possible to obtain an abortion [with the lack of providers].
Thinking about all this, I decided that it was a point of view of a doctor that I wanted to follow because I not only wanted to go through the experiences of different women, but I also wanted to explore the moral and professional dilemma and to make a film that would be not specifically about abortion, but about womanhood somehow. Then Nina became a character that embodied the vision of the film on her own.
The last time we spoke, you mentioned how you had some ideas for the main character in “Beginning,” but Ia brought the character fully formed, complete with the costume. What was it like collaborating with her on Nina?
It’s actually an important story for me because when I was making “Beginning,” I met with every potential actress in Georgia – professionals, non-professionals, musicians, artists – for the character. And I didn’t want to meet Ia because she’s a very, very famous actress in Georgia and I thought “I know her [already]. She’s such a diva. She doesn’t fit in into this character. She embodies this grandiose, dramatic theater [actor].” I always saw her there as Juliet and Ophelia over the years and I [thought], “I just can’t. She does not fit in.” And then she came in and was like, I want to do the [audition], and I really admire her because she’s so brave. She comes to you as a director and says, “I’m going to be this character” – and she’s going to be. She’s also a great friend because when I was writing and she knew that I was a bit distracted – it was the pandemic when it was so difficult to get around – she just gave me the keys to her country house. And she was like, I recently renovated my country house and [told me], “You should go and you should just sit there.” And then she used to come on weekends and we would talk about the character.
And I had a very ambiguous understanding of a character, but I was telling her that “This is Nina. This is how she walks through the fields. And she stops her car when she goes from one village to another. And she’s like breathing in life.” But I didn’t know much more. But [Ia] helps you as a director to understand your own process even because I was [saying] to someone else, it’s very difficult to work with her, not because she’s difficult, but because she’s such a great actress you can’t just go to her and say a couple active verbs, like whatever I learned actually at school [to tell actors]. No, you need to be very specific, but also be very open to see all the possibilities that she brings in and all the questions. Then once she starts to embody the character, she is the character, you can’t talk to her as Ia anymore. Sometimes that’s not easy also, because I’d want to talk to Ia, but she doesn’t exist, so it’s always an interesting process to work with her.
As in “Beginning,” you bring in a lot of non-professionals to act in the film alongside her. Do those scenes have a certain unpredictability about them because people are coming at it from different angles?
Yeah, sometimes it’s impossible. We do shoot scenes which never end up in a film, despite like many rehearsals. We rehearse, it’s very meticulously planned, but then it just doesn’t work. Because sometimes the problem is actually that everybody’s energy and presence should align and to be somehow part of the same universe and even if one person is out of tune, nothing starts to work. At least in my films usually, I can feel even if one element is not working, it’s just not working and I need to rethink the scene entirely.
I had the same problem when I was making “Beginning”. Sometimes I would put extras in the shot, shoot it three times, three different ways, and then I would remove everyone, just leave one person and the scene would be what it had to be. In this case, it’s the same. And it’s not because of a professional versus non-professional actor, but about how well do I understand what these non-professional people actually represent? Because sometimes I am imposing my own thoughts and the camera sees it. And sometimes I go terribly wrong in casting. I’m always wrong in rehearsals and then I need to admit that it just doesn’t work. So it’s a process, and I always keep saying it’s important to be able to have a freedom with my team to say that I make mistakes and it’s okay. We’ll either find a way to do it better or we just don’t do it at all. But we will be doing what film needs, despite of our perception of how great we are as directors or producers or actors, so it’s important for me to be able to admit that I fail. It’s not about actors. It’s usually about my mistakes.
Was there any situation where the best idea won and it wasn’t your idea, but it made it into the film that you really like about it now?
Yes, of course, but usually by the time I finish the film, I don’t know what was whose idea in a way, because it’s a process of collaboration. I want my actors to be coming to me and to tell me “This scene does not work. I cannot do this.” One of the most important collaborators in this regard is Kakha [Kintsurashvili], who [plays Nina’s collague] David in the film because he sometimes has so many questions that are unbearable for me and I get exhausted by answering things, but also he’s incredible in this regard. He’s one of the most incredible actors in this way that I ever met. He grows from one film to another enormously. It’s a different person who comes in to work with you. And that can terrify me sometimes because I don’t grow like that much, but he really pushes like, “Why is the name of the wife’s character this?” And then sometimes those questions do not make any sense. But then he really makes the character so specific that I don’t know anymore what was his idea or what was my idea and I don’t care because it’s not about that for me.
Cinema is this space which is a very collaborative art and it’s a blessing. It also is the most threatening and most vulnerable place, and that’s why I want to work with people who are okay to see me as a normal human who really is able to feel because I’m always scared of those systems. I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong, but sometimes I think that maybe Hollywood is that kind of system where you need to know and I really don’t know many things [in the thick of the work]. It’s a process where I will either get to know or maybe I’ll start to know when I’m editing. I will shoot without really knowing. And then I will understand what I did. Or maybe I’ll understand when I’ll watch my film. But it is really a process.
One of the striking elements about the film is its visual rhythm – given how long you’ll hold on certain shots, it was really destabilizing early on when you throw in a scene of stray dogs that’s really loose and handheld and there will be these interruptions throughout the film. When the static scenes had to be planned out, was that something you had a strong idea of early on or did it come together in the edit?
[With] the dogs specifically, it was very difficult to even film because these are actual stray dogs from streets that we used to see when I was there while casting and preparing the film and I really wanted to film these specific dogs because I love these dogs that live in the streets there. We needed to bring a professional animal handler who would be training the dogs, and they would be collaborative to a certain degree, but of course, they were not really that trained. They just learned not to be scared of camera, and it was difficult with this huge camera to be actually filming the dogs while also trying to control the time within a shot, like how you move from one dog to another. We shot it twice actually on two separate days because we made so many takes.Once you start to edit, there are random comments from people who are a part of the team [saying], “Oh, you need to make the shot shorter,” and I already have this experience on my films that you might make one short shorter and then in time, it will fall apart because you can’t just randomly change one part of the film, even when it’s one shot without ruining the entire experience of the entire film. So I’m very careful with how we create the experience of time. I always ask the team to give me more specific notes about perception and understanding, but not about [whether] this can be shorter or longer because those things start to interfere with the process of making a film. I also learned when we were making “Beginning” that when we edit, we work every day on the entire cut of the film. We don’t work just in segments because it does not work. The next day, if you work on segments, the next day we come in, we watch the entire cut and the film doesn’t make any sense anymore, so it’s something as a director I learned about my own process.
The connection to nature was such a striking part of this – you can often hear the sound of animals when you’re inside a sacred space like a hospital or a living room – and it’s never unbroken. What was it like to develop?
The sound for me is as important as image or even more important because it’s more tangible, but also a very sensory experience. I want to be able to expand the space or to create space within the mind of a viewer through the sound. And again, usually when I have theoretical ideas of what it’s going to be, it doesn’t work, so it requires a lot of time to sit in the room with a sound designer and to really focus on trying things. There are so many elements of sound, and for example I’m always there when we do an editing of dialogue and I know that many directors are usually not there, but for me, I need to listen because usually we record while shooting and then they also record on set several times without actually shooting. Then we also do ADR and we assemble the dialogue that way with each word because the spoken language is not just information, but Intonation, tonality, just everything, the rhythm. And Ia is perfect [here] again because she can do ADR in a million different ways, always perfectly. I don’t know how she does it, but we we record her every breath and then edit it and make it a bit slower to create the experience in the film to go through it with [her as] the main character. It’s something which didn’t come to me initially, but came gradually in the process.
I know for my screening in Toronto, you filmed an introduction to the screening since your own recent birth made it difficult to travel. This must be surreal, reflecting on this particular film now?
It was really interesting because I was at home and being a mother of a very young child is very emotionally overwhelming and beautiful, but it’s also a very isolating moment in life, and to know that your film plays somewhere, I was emotionally very vulnerable. It was difficult to separate what was more important, what was happening in my home or what was happening somewhere where my film was and I guess from now on that’s always going to be part of my life because before when I did not have a child and I was just making films, it was a totally different experience and my personal life did not matter. Now, it really does.
“April” is now open in New York at Film Forum and Film at Lincoln Center and opens on May 2nd in Los Angeles at the Laemmle Royal and on May 9th at the Laemmle Glendale and the Encino Town Center.