International Art House Series
A complex and disquieting depiction of a caregiver in crisis, rich with haunting, metaphorical imagery that feels emanated from its acclaimed director's subconscious.
Nina is a skilled obstetrician at a maternity hospital in Eastern Georgia. After a difficult delivery, an infant dies and the grief-racked father demands an inquiry into her methods. The resulting scrutiny threatens to bring to light Nina’s work—providing unsanctioned abortions to desperate girls and women—and to destroy the profession that is the only source of meaning in her life. The second feature of acclaimed Georgia director Dea Kulumbegashvili, April is a profoundly committed work that immerses the viewer in the reality of lives constrained by patriarchal tradition. [134 min; drama; Georgian with English subtitles]
This screening is supported by the Institute for European Studies, a Jean Monnet EU Centre of Excellence.
"It’s a quiet wail in the darkness of the night, hurtling along with all the force of a lightning bolt." — Chase Hutchinson, The Seattle Times
"We have a new cinematic poet in Kulumbegashvili." — Donald Clarke, The Irish Times
"April is loath to explain itself, inviting us instead to watch, listen and feel our way through it—a work marked, like the benevolent but unreachable woman at its center, by immense empathy and isolated, inconsolable despair." — Guy Lodge, Variety
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