Skip to the Interview
After the crazy season of film festivals, I’m thrilled to finally present one of the most fascinating interviews to ever be on this blog. Swift as it was, the content is absolutely riveting and, not gonna lie, infuriating. This is completely thanks to Dea Kulumbegashvili, director of April (2024). She was the only director I managed to interview at a press event not quite thought-out for small press outlets such as this one. For that attention, I will always be grateful.
April is a film about an OB-GYN named Nina. Her morality and professional career are called into question after a newborn dies during delivery on her watch. The rumours that say she practices illegal abortions to women who need it don’t help her situation. Nevertheless, she’s determined to continue working under her own terms.
The horrible reality of this film, a reality in which discriminating women and deciding their rights for them is a given, is sadly very much what we are living now. There is nothing fictional about it. Kulumbegashvili speaks up about this, and about her latest encounter with the machinery of patriarchy, in this interview.
Not only is the theme of the film right up Cut to the Take’s alley, but Kulumbegashvili is a wonder to listen to. Hopefully, reading this will be as enthralling for you as it was for me to meet her. If anything, she has reinforced this writer’s opinion that more female voices should be heard in the industry. Indeed, we are still a long, long way away from arriving to any form of equality in cinema.
Join us on this eye-opening conversation about women inside and out of the industry! Shock and rage guaranteed.
April‘s creator
Dea Kulumbegashvili is a Georgian director and writer who explores the position of women in different contexts throughout her career. Her work serves as a commentary on the social, political, and economic injustices that women suffer because of their gender.
Kulumbegashvili is a breath of fresh air for the industry. She is unafraid to speak up in her daily life as much as with her work. The cinema sphere needs more voices like hers if we ever hope this art to finally be inclusive and egalitarian. Until then, we’ll always have Kulumbegashvili reminding us of how long the walk to equality is with brilliant works like Invisible Spaces (2014), Beginning (2020), and, of course, April (2024).
Talking to Dea Kulumbegashvili
As the writer of a small press outlet, I was so stunned by getting to actually interview one of the amazing female directors at the event, that it took me a few seconds to find myself. Still, nothing could have prepared me for the fascinating conversation I was about to have with Kulumbegashvili.
Lucy Muñoz: What inspire you to create this film?
Dea Kulumbegashvili: I think it’s very urgent, and it’s very necessary, to talk about something as obvious as women’s right to their own body. It is a shame that in the twenty-first century we are still discussing this, and there are more shameful things, unfortunately. I could go on about this endlessly as a female director, because I know how this industry usually treats us.
Now, I am dealing with a totally new level of craziness because I have an eight-months-old child, and it’s shocking for most people in the industry to even accept the fact that I can be working at the same time, they can’t invite me somewhere with a child. They don’t know how to proceed. They don’t know how to deal with it.
LM: Like you’re suddenly a different person.
DK: Oh my God, yes! They cannot put you in a hotel, they cannot provide. They can’t do anything because “oh, you are with a child”. And I’m like, “You know what? This is why women were unable to make films for decades!”. And maybe we really need to address this question, finally.
LM: Before this situation, had you experienced any difficulties because of being a woman in the industry?
DK: Of course! There are many difficulties. Usually, people talk about unequal pay, which is a very frustrating issue, but even before we get to that point, there are very basic things which are totally different for men and women.
I hope there are more stay-at-home-fathers now, so maybe they know what that means as well, but mostly, unfortunately, it’s still women. As a mother, and for me the most important thing in my life is being a mother, but I’m not going to stop making films. I’m gonna go on, and I think the industry needs to find the way to deal with it.
The problem is that they get shocked when they see you with a child because they can not accommodate you. You have no idea in how many festivals I have faced this. They tell me that the hotels are not equipped for a child to be there, because they have never dealt with it before. Unless you are a very famous actress who has a huge team and the distributors step in so they take care of things, this is something that they just can’t deal with. They don’t know how to deal with these things.
LM: You made a movie called Beginning, in 2020, in which, like April, you also tell the story of a woman going against the traditional values of her community. Is that a theme that you would like to keep exploring in the future
DK: Well, it’s not like it’s my theme, but I feel that as a female director, talking about female experiences is the most obvious, to me at least. I think that we have seen a lot of very male-focused cinema for over a century, so I guess it’s okay now to talk about the female experience of the world. That’s what I’m dedicated to doing. And it’s hilarious in a way that we are really only now realising that most of the female characters created until now have nothing to do with how women live.
LM: How did you choose Ia Sukhitashvili for the role of Nina?
DK: We also worked together in Beginning, and she’s a great actress. I had this feeling that it was not finished, what we had created together, so I understood that I needed to write this part for her because she’s a brilliant actress, and I thought that I needed to provide more material for her in a way.
LM: What’s your favourite trait of Ia’s?
DK: My favourite thing about Ia is that she’s a really great actress. She’s not twenty any more, and that’s very interesting because she started as a child actress, and then she was Ophelia when she was seventeen, in theatre. She’s a huge diva in Georgia, actually, and she has an incredibly career.
But now, she’s dealing with the subject of what should she do, as a woman, because there is so much demand that she needs to look like she’s twenty-five again. And she refused, she wants age-appropriate roles because she wants to portray what she actually feels as a woman. This is very important because, unfortunately, not many actresses are even giving themselves the opportunity to do this. There is such a horrible expectation for us to constantly act like twenty-five-years-olds.
LM: You are either nineteen or a grandmother.
DK: Yes, exactly. In-between, there is nothing for actresses. And it is a shame because in theatre maybe there is much more, because there are brilliant plays written for women of all ages. It’s just cinema that shamefully falls behind. Cinema operates on excluding a lot of people, really.
LM: And about Nina?
DK: Well, I don’t know what is favourite, but I think that for me, it was really important to create a character who has this resilience and sense of dedication. I did not want to create a character that would just make women and men in the audience feel good, and feel that we achieved something as a society because she won some cause in the film. On the contrary, I wanted to show that winning is not an easy task.
Indeed, winning anything as a woman in this day and age, is anything but an easy task. What’s your take? Are you a female filmmaker? Whether you are just starting or already have a few projects on your belt, I’d love to hear all about it and learn about your experiences! So please don’t hesitate to contact me for a chat or an interview.
It is heartbreaking to learn that even the distribution circle is unable to accommodate basic needs women may have. Stories like yours and Dea’s are incredibly important to share if we hope to do better in the future.
Additionally, if you’re just here to read and learn some new stuff, don’t hesitate to let me know your thoughts in the comments section below, or leave a message in my contact page! For more reviews and cinema-related articles, check out the rest of my blog! 😀
For more updates, chatting and additional content, don’t be shy! Check out my social media and connect!