BEGINNING

A village in the Georgian provinces. During a Jehovah’s Witnesses service, a firebomb is thrown into the prayer room and the Kingdom Hall burns down. Yana (Ia Sukhitashvili), the wife of congregation leader David (Rati Oneli), helped build the congregation and set her own life aside for it. David obtains footage from a surveillance camera and seeks justice, but the local police offer no help, and the family is soon left alone. Then a man appears at Yana’s door claiming to be an investigator and asking questions. In her debut “Beginning” (Georgia 2020), Dea Kulumbegashvili tells of a woman’s exposure within an order that men have made – inside the congregation as much as outside it.

The film is made up of long, static shots; the camera waits rather than follows, and the violence often happens at the edge of the frame or outside it altogether. At the San Sebastián Film Festival 2020, “Beginning” won the Golden Shell as well as the awards for direction, screenplay and leading actress; in Toronto it received the FIPRESCI Prize. The film was shown at Around the World in 14 Films in Berlin in 2020.

Shown at the 2020 edition of Around the World in 14 Films.

All films 2020 · Film Archive