By Lucy Spicer
One of the most exciting things about the Sundance Film Festival is having a front-row seat for the bright future of independent filmmaking. While we can learn a lot about the filmmakers from the 2025 Sundance Film Festival through the art that these storytellers share with us, there’s always more we can learn about them as people. We decided to get to the bottom of those artistic wells with our ongoing series: Give Me the Backstory!
Dea Kulumbegashvili’s introduction to cinema may have been delayed, but it was no less meaningful when it arrived. “I grew up during a civil war. We never had electricity, and I [did not watch] films until I was a teenager. Maybe this is why cinema came to me as a revelation of some sort,” says the filmmaker. “I was so enchanted by its magic and power. But it took me many years to finally dare to make my own film.” Kulumbegashvili made her feature directorial debut at the Toronto International Festival in 2020 with Beginning, and now her sophomore feature is steadily reaching new festival audiences and collecting accolades along the way.
April, which is screening in the Spotlight section at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, originally premiered at the 81st Venice International Film Festival, where it won the Special Jury Prize. The film centers on Nina (Ia Sukhitashvili), an obstetrician in Eastern Georgia who moonlights as an abortion provider for village women and girls who are prohibited by law from obtaining them. Kulumbegashvili felt compelled to make the film after returning to Georgia in 2020 to stay with her family during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I started to see how little has changed since my childhood. How little the life of a woman matters here. I was meeting women who I went to high school with, then one woman led to another, and soon I had all the stories that women came to share with me. There was so much untold and unexpressed pain in their stories,” recalls Kulumbegashvili. “This film is not a portrait of one of them, but rather an attempt to grasp the lives of women in this remote place. In a way, this film is an expression of love to my home, a feeling that is tormented and delightful at the same time. I do not live there at the moment, but it is an unresolved relationship with home that keeps me going back to make films there.”
Read on to learn more about April and Kulumbegashvili, including her favorite aspects of the filmmaking process and how she believes cinema can lead to discussion in a polarized world.
Describe who you want April to reach.
I hope people who deny and who disregard our right to choose when it comes to our bodies — I hope that my film does reach them. I always hope that maybe cinema can initiate a dialogue or create a space for doubt, for questions. Perhaps what scares me the most is those people who are just so sure in their rightfulness. And I, of course, hope that my film reaches those who have had experiences that connect to those portrayed in the film. I think cinema sometimes manages to reach out to a person in the audience and say, “You’re not alone.”
Films are lasting artistic legacies; what do you want yours to say?
That maybe we go around in circles as a society. We somehow manage to go back to what we thought we did overcome and [make] a change for better. I hope that my film did capture something that goes beyond a script and a story — life as it is in this place, with its overwhelming beauty and suffering.
Also, considering the political situation in Georgia, I do not think I can make films there in the foreseeable future. Maybe April is some kind of testament of time we live in, some breaking point for me as a director.
Tell us an anecdote about casting or working with your actors.
As I have always worked with professional and nonprofessional actors, the anecdotes usually happen when we shoot long takes involving everyone — especially children, who tend to fall asleep while we roll. That is when I start to really get it: Some of the scenes I shoot are maybe too long.
Your favorite part of making April? Memories from the process?
I am endlessly grateful for being able to make films. I love every aspect of the process. I do love writing. Then casting and looking for the place where we shoot. I believe that it is vital to do my best on set. I need to be fully present and very aware of what I am doing as a director. What happens on set, what we film, is actually what the film is going to be. So, I love being on set.
I think I have said this so many times already but the best memories are those when there is something beyond your control and you hope that it happens right on the shooting day. And then it does happen. In the case of my film, when we really hoped for the storm to come, and it did, and it was marvelous.
Why does this story need to be told now?
I believe that as local as the story told in the film is, the characters and the story are universally understood. Sadly, the film talks about the universal problem.
Why is filmmaking important to you? Why is it important to the world?
Maybe cinema is a political act in the contemporary world. It is a medium that creates a space, a world that allows to ask questions, to invite the viewer to join the experience, even those of the viewers who think differently. The world we live in is more and more polarized. It is not as diverse as we hoped it would have been, but rather divided into two opposite narratives. However, I believe that there are those who stand aside, who question and examine the world, their own selves. Maybe cinema allows us to feel accepted and included? Maybe because I grew up in a country with a heavy Soviet legacy, I am scared of any truth that is the only acceptable one.
What three things do you always have in your refrigerator?
Cheese, baby food, and short ends of the film stock.
What was the last thing you saw that you wish you made?
Festen by Thomas Vinterberg.
Tell us about your history with Sundance Institute. When was the first time you engaged with us? Why did you want your film to screen with us?
When I made my first short film in 2014, then my second short film in 2016, I always sent my work to Sundance. However, April is my first film that is going to screen [at] Sundance. Even when my work was not screened at the Festival, I felt very much welcome as a director by people who work for the Festival.
Sundance is a wonderful place that supports and shows great cinema. I am very excited to be screening my film here. I think it is very important as I wish my film to be seen and to have an audience. It is not always easy for films made in the Georgian language to gain an audience in the U.S.
What’s your favorite film that has come from the Sundance Institute or Festival?
There are many. Would be difficult to name just one or even several. A few years ago there was a wonderful Georgian documentary, The Machine Which Makes Everything Disappear — This film is incredibly good.
