Dea Kulumbegashvili's 'Beginning' in special Cannes Film Festival edition
A still from the feature that casts Ia Sukhitashvili as the principal protagonist. Photo via Cannes Film Festival.
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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".
Award-winning film director Dea Kulumbegashvili will make her feature debut with the world premiere of Beginning at the San Sebastian Film Festival later this year.
Dea Kulumbegashvili has collected the FIPRESCI international film critics award at the Toronto International Film Festival for her feature debut Beginning, with the film praised for an "emotionally compelling debut".
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.
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 San Sebastian Film Festival-winning film for the honour on Wednesday.
Two weekends of screenings will bring a selection of classic and new Georgian cinema to viewers at Cinema Club Split, in western Croatia's Mediterranean city, starting next Friday.
Filmmaker Dea Kulumbegashvili's Toronto- and San Sebastian Film Festival prize-winning feature Beginning is coming to viewers of the International Film Festival Rotterdam next month.
One of Soviet Georgian cinema's all-time classics is returning to France's major Cannes Film Festival next month, with a freshly restored and digitised version of Tengiz Abuladze's 1984 Repentance set to screen in the Cannes Classics section that presents preserved masterpieces to audiences of the festival.
Acclaimed Georgian director Dea Kumulbegashvili, whose feature Beginning won the San Sebastian Film Festival last year, will be the chair of this year’s festival. Kulumbegashvili is the winner of four official awards of the festival for her debut film, including the Golden Shell for Best Film, the Silver Shell for Best Director and the Jury Prize for Best Screenplay.
In the latest international recognition for her debut feature Beginning, filmmaker Dea Kulumbegashvili claimed the principal prize of the Trieste Film Festival in Italy on Sunday.