Dea Kulumbegashvili's debut feature 'Beginning' selected as Georgia's Oscar bid

Dea Kulumbegashvili's debut feature Beginning has been unveiled as Georgia's bid for the next Academy Award for Best International Feature Film, after a Georgian National Film Centre commission picked the Toronto- and San Sebastian Film Festival-winning film for the honour on Wednesday.

The 12-member commission made its selection from a shortlist that also included Uta Beria's Georgian-French-Italian co-production drama Negative Numbers and Odesa International Film Festival prize nominee Ursus  by Otar Shamatava.

After the three works were screened to the juries, they announced their pick in the evening, with Kulumbegashvili's film - called an "emotionally compelling debut feature" at the Canadian festival - receiving a large majority of the votes.

The commission that selected Kulumbegashvili's feature debut for the Oscar submission. Photo via GNFC.

The first feature by the director shows a Jehovah's witness woman and her family in a remote town in Georgia, where both the police and an extremist group subject them to violence.

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.

Beginning 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".

The next Academy Awards ceremony is set o take place on April 25, 2021.