Critics reviews

Despite its Georgian specificity, there is something universal about the pain the women in the film experience... Whether you find the content gross, exploitative, familiar, or eye-opening, Dea Kulumbegashvili’s April is opening up conversation where it is sorely needed.

It’s an arresting, astounding work of art that’s frequently closer to horror in its haunting rhythms while bursting with a deeply felt emotional core. In each moment of hushed, fraught conversation and each shot of the film’s stunning landscapes, Kulumbegashvili crafts a menacing modern masterpiece.

Reunited with both her lead actress Sukhitashvili and cinematographer Arseni Khachaturan, the director again... divines a remarkable view into the story in which the reality in front of Nina, the doctor, doesn’t necessary align with her perspective on it and more impressively considers the position of women who aren’t considered in a patriarchal society much beyond their physical selves.

Not quite a thriller and not quite a horror movie, “April” is all the more haunting for never pinning down the roots of Nina’s retreat from life while dedicating herself to improving the lives of others.

This feeling of quiet rebellion against patriarchy... materializes into something much more mysterious and altogether more potent in Kulumbegashvili’s second feature, April.

April highlights the consequences of the war on reproductive rights through her unflinching attack of the senses, with the female body becoming a powerless vessel that our eyes desperately try to escape, lingering inside our skin as we are immersed in the true horror of this fate.

She favors long, static takes that may frustrate you, even as you admire their beauty or the boldness of their framing. While it may be difficult to discern what Kulumbegashvili’s aim is in the moment, the cumulative effect of her storytelling approach packs an undeniable wallop.

Kulumbegashvil’s film is formally composed and rigorously opaque, but it churns with an underlying, aching despair... “April” confirms Kulumbegashvili as among the most essential and uncompromising European filmmakers... a grimly spellbinding and unforgettable experience.

This extraordinarily bleak and devastating work, set in a damp-looking stretch of eastern Georgia...

Sukhitashvili’s titanic performance of inner conflict and bone-chilling loneliness lets us understand the true depths of the film’s excoriatingly intelligent despair.

Riven with ambiguity, what you think about the intellectual questions around women’s autonomy raised are likely to vary, but April’s emotion will drill its way into your bones.

It’s a heavy, serious and studiously elusive movie filled with handsome images and troubled by the inexplicable presence of a humanoid creature in weird female form. This entity gives “April” a supernatural sheen, yet the movie is rooted in the material world, in the here and now, in flesh and fluids.