Dea Kulumbegashvili's 'Beginning' in special Cannes Film Festival edition

Filmmaker Dea Kulumbegashvili's award-winning feature debut Beginning is in the official selection of the Cannes Film Festival, published in place of the usual running of the festival, curtailed due to the pandemic this year.

The Georgian director's Toronto- and San Sebastian Film Festival prize-winning film is in the First Features programme of the French event that involves 15 works in the showcase.

Picked for the programme after taking the international prizes and being chosen as Georgia's bid at the next Academy Awards, the French-Georgian co-production is centred around a Jehovah Witness community in a provincial town, and their harassment by local police.

[The] film presents a young filmmaker’s perspective on the fossilised society of her country. Dea Kulumbegashvili constructs her story as a hunt, a stalk between a hypnotised prey and accomplished predator" - Cannes Film Festival Selection Committee

Played by actor Ia Sukhitashvili, the principal protagonist of the story is subjected to hostility by locals and a young police officer, as "everything is played out through static sets and a will to survive" (Selection Committee).

Beginning is in the First Features programme alongside Falling - the feature debut by actor Viggo Mortensen - as well as works by directors Ninja Thyberg, Fanny Liatard and Jeremy Trouilh, and others.

Kulumbegashvili's work earned its director the FIPRESCI international film critics award at the Toronto International Film Festival and four of the principal awards at the San Sebastian event last month.

The film also received acclaim at other events, with the New York Film Festival calling it an "occasionally harrowing depiction of women’s roles in both religious and secular society".