“April” is a film grounded in realism. In the story of Nina (Ia Sukhitashvili), a Georgian OB-GYN who provides abortions to the women of the neighboring village, the protagonist’s patients are played by first-time performers drawing from their own lives in the rural areas where the film was shot. Writer/director Dea Kulumbegashvili is so detail-oriented that she spent the better part of a year in the hospital, where “April” also filmed, studying the doctors, even convincing them to allow her to capture the birth that opens the film.
“April” is also a formally bold piece of cinema, that breaks from what is expected from social realistist film — most notably in the scenes featuring that unexplained appearance of Nina as the “creature” (Sukhitashvili wearing something akin a less grotesque version of Demi Moore’s “The Substance” prosthetics), which are embued with expressionistic lighting and sound at times are reminscent of Jonathan Glazer’s “Under the Skin.” Kulumbegashvili, though, pushed back on the idea that the creature scenes were a break from the film’s realism when she was a guest on this week’s episode of IndieWire’s Filmmaker Toolkit podcast.
“[The] creature is real for me as well,” said Kulumbegashvili. “I think that the creature makes the reality even more real somehow.”
In some ways, the creature was Kulumbegashvili’s cinematic answer to a question she couldn’t answer. Her protagonist is a woman of incredible empathy, so much so that she refuses to stop providing abortions and contraception to the village women despite the risk to her career when she comes under the scrutiny of a formal investigation. Nina won’t turn her back on the young women trapped in a cycle of abuse and a lack of education, but the cumulative toll of the experience was one Kulumbegashvili wrestled with while writing.
“If Nina is here for so many years, and she comes to the villages every week, several times, what does it do to her?” said Kulumbegashvili. “All the misery and all the pain that she witnessed — and she was maybe part of it also while those things happened — how does it affect her? And I started to think that maybe there is a moment when empathy becomes almost unbearable.”
As Kulumbegashvili played with this in her mind, she struggled with a fundamental question that led to the creation of the creature: What does getting out of this unbearable experience mean, or even look like on camera?
“I started to really see Nina being in this world between worlds. I can’t explain it, honestly. I’ve been asked this question by producers, obviously, many times in the process, but I was really never able to rationalize it. But also I really love the way that cinema is the medium that allows us to get to the irrational, and not to seek answers, but maybe ask more questions,” said Kulumbegashvili. “For me, cinema is the question of perception: What is the reality, and what is the perception? And the perception of who’s looking, that’s also very important.”
This question of perception is explored in “April” when the film breaks into extended point-of-view shots. One much-discussed scene — in which Nina picks up a hitchhiker she attempts to have an anonymous sexual encounter with — is filmed in a continuous take from Nina’s perspective behind the wheel.
“I wanted the audience in that moment to be put in the position of this man, even though we experienced the scene through [Nina’s] point of view,” said Kulumbegashvili. “It was something interesting because somehow we held two points of view, and one is ours.”
Kulumbegashvili continued to wrestle with the idea of perception while shooting the movie. She described chronicling the production through an “experiential journal,” which she writes in throughout filming and is later utilized to unlock the film’s bold and expressionistic use of sound.
“When I am on set, and I’m usually next to the camera, I’m really connected with what’s happening in front of the camera,” said Kulumbegashvili. “Instinctively, I started to hear what’s really related to the image, or to the experience of the scene. And I want to preserve this memory [in the journal].”
What the director aurally extracts from the journal entries is a striking use of sound, especially in the POV and creature shots, filled with the prominent noises of breathing, rain, and a score-as-sound-design created from instruments made of horse bones (composer Matthew Herbert).
“[Sound] can be a very physical and very tangible experience of the film,” said Kulumbegashvili. “I really wanted the audience to go through the film and for the reality to come really close, almost like touching our face.”
“April” is now playing in theaters from Metrograph Pictures.
To hear Dea Kulumbegashvili ’s full interview, subscribe to the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform. You can also watch the full interview at the top of the page or on IndieWire’s YouTube page.
