“As a Georgian, I don’t believe much in hope,” D Kulumbagashwili. “I am here and now and now a person.” It seems appropriate that he shot his film secretly, without permission or security, and saw that his country pretends that his work was not present. In Bhavna, he is not away from Iranian filmmakers like Jaffer Panahi, who once hid a film in a cake to get out of the country, or Mohammad Rasolof, who crossed the mountains on foot to escape from prison. Some limits away, Kulumbagshwili filmed april Inside the real maternity clinic, allow the camera to stay away from which power will look away.
aprilFollowing his ears beginningThe rigor of the report and a feminist is a nerve of terror. It follows an OB-GYN in Nina, rural Georgia, who performs secret abortion in its spare time. The most speaking moment of the film is an unwanted, long view of a termination on a deaf-deformed teenager, anchor his pole in a stable thunder of embodied truth. “I wanted to show it. I needed to show it,” DEA. “Because I think it’s time that we actually bring the woman into the beautiful realm of cinema.”
For prominent actor Iya Sukhitashwili, that gaze demanded immersion. “We were there for two years,” she says. “And during that time, I was constantly thinking about Nina. Sometimes I lost a relationship with me, but I highlighted all efforts to feel the feelings of this character. It was very challenging.”
Iya Sukhitashwili as Nina, still from ‘April’. Photo Credit: Mubi
Sukhitashwili first won the best actress in San Sebastian beginningBut april A different kind of surrender is said. He participated in real births and visited real doctors. “It was a kind of magic,” she remembers. “There was a complete silence. Just eye contact between the chief doctor and assistant. And looking at it helped me understand who Nina is.”
Nina is a woman on the verge of tiredness, administered the epidural according to the day and the birth control pills at night, often at great personal risk. But the risk is not just logistic. In Georgia, the abortion is technically legal for 12 weeks, but accessible, especially in rural areas, is immersed in conservative Christian tradition, wherever the words can be dangerous. So he made april The only way she could do: clandestinley. She says, “I was able to get away with it because no one cares about me,” she says, with a bitter sense of clarity. “Now, more people care, and it’s going to be more difficult. Or impossible too.”
Nevertheless, he made the film. Kulumbagashwili and his team embedded themselves in a small -town maternity clinic for almost a year, in real time in view of birth, surgery and abortion. IA said, “I would like to thank the administration of the small town clinic in Lagodeki, who allowed us to inspect this process and see these processes in this birthting clinic.” He said, “We made related amendments to the screenplay based on our comments,” he said.
For both the actor and the director, it seemed almost to blur the line between immersion imagination and witnesses. And it gives commitment to realism april Its almost unbearable power. Its living politics is ignored, and the way Nina alone leads the fogi highways, stops for anonymous sex, and resumes her path for another kitchen-table abortion.
Still from ‘April’. Photo Credit: Mubi
In Georgia, such visibility is indefinitely dangerous. Although april International praise, no theater in the country has dared to screen it. “It is such that we live in this absurd reality, where there is no answer why my film cannot be screening,” the DEA said. “The dictatorship is usually absurd and real. And once you cannot say anything to things, this is when you know that you are going to the most oppressive of governance.”
As yet, april Is not about despair, or rather, it refuses to end there. Its unwavering view of the female body as both the vessel and the battlefield both the vessel and the battlefield, it emphasizes a sensible resistance. “I think it is in the form of feminine, not only feminists,” DEA says. “My films are about living experiences.”
Nevertheless, the horror is real and quite intentional. “I would really like to make a real horror film one day,” she accepts, a little laughing. “But I think the horror gives us the most freedom to be honest, not already honest, and not taking ourselves very seriously.” In many ways, april Already a scary film, although one is not being seen, being believed, or even allowed to help.
Asked about other films in style – such as Audrey Diwan Is happening And Eliza Hitman Sometimes sometimes always – The DEA nodded his head. “I praise both of them. They are incredible women and artists. I think cinema is a form of dialogue with everything that came before and whatever is coming. Without that dialogue, art is impossible.”
Iya Sukhitashwili as Nina, still from ‘April’. Photo Credit: Mubi
The film’s centerpiece abortion scene has shaken both praise and restlessness. But for the DEA, the decision was never for debate. “This was the most obvious thing,” she says. “We talk about what is hidden in this world. How people do not want to accept that abortion occurs.” When his main male growers questioned whether the audience could “handle” it, she says, “This caused me to be even more confident.”
This firm belief is craving in that unnecessarily stable frame. This scene is almost silent, focusing on the young girl’s pelvis. We do not see Nina or its equipment. Only one girl, turning into inconvenience, and her sister’s hand, off-frame, holding her. Soundtrack will not be any other witness to whispering a moment.
“We give it to women to show it”, IA. For him, step into Nina’s body was a means to continue the tradition of telling the feminist story, but also to break it. “You don’t find every character easily,” she says. “Some, you have to wait for the seriousness of the situation made.”
The film can never be a screen in Georgia, for both women, a heartbreak. “People ask me all the time,” Ia says. “‘Why didn’t we see it?” And I don’t have a good answer.
April is currently available to stream on Mubi
Published – 01 August, 2025 06:29 pm IST
