New York Film Festival picks Dea Kulumbegashvili's 'Beginning' for Main Slate programme
Actor Ia Sukhitashvili is cast as the protagonist of 'Beginning'. Photo via San Sebastian Film Festival.
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The upcoming New York Film Festival will have Dea Kulumbegashvili's feature 'Beginning' in the Main Slate programme, in the same week the film has its world debut at the San Sebastian Film Festival.
The new work by the award-winning director (Lethe, Invisible Spaces) is previewed as a "striking feature debut" with "rigorous, compositionally complex frames" to tell its story of a woman from a Jehovah's Witness community in a remote Georgian town.
The protagonist in the plot becomes a target of locals when her place of worship is burned down during a service. Despite having a CCTV footage as evidence of the crime, the local police are indifferent at best to attempts of Yana and her husband to claim justice.
Announcing the Main Slate selections of the 58th New York Film Festival, featuring 25 exceptional films from around the world! Explore: https://t.co/D1ZJU6iaK1 #NYFF pic.twitter.com/oE7afFMbvb
— New York Film Festival (@TheNYFF) August 13, 2020
[Kulumbegashvili's work is an] occasionally harrowing depiction of women’s roles in both religious and secular society, Beginning announces a major new arrival on the world cinema scene," a preview from the NYFF said.
Earlier this year the director told Cineuropa she wanted "audiences to identify with this unsettling condition where experiences cannot be simply classified as true or false" with her work. Kulumbegashvili wrote the screenplay alongside director Rati Oneli.
Ia Sukhitashvili is cast in the principal role of the feature - selected for this year's Festival de Cannes, which eventually did not go live due to the ongoing concerns with COVID-19.
The New York festival is scheduled to run between September 17–October 11. The full Main Slate programme can be viewed on the official website.