'April' explores reproductive rights and gender alienation in rural Georgia

Dea Kulumbegashvili’s haunting film "April" dives deep into bodily autonomy, female grief, and rural isolation through the lens of a resolute doctor.

In “April,” Ia Sukhitashvili portrays a stoic obstetrician who provides abortions outside her hospital duties. (c) Metrograph Pictures

By Anna Fadiah and Hayu Andini

A rural hospital, an unflinching doctor, and a ghostly humanoid presence frame the unsettling yet poetic landscape of April, the latest feature from Georgian filmmaker Dea Kulumbegashvili. Set in an unnamed village in the country of Georgia, the April film confronts reproductive rights through a female lens, with slow-burning intensity and visual mystique. Focused on the quiet yet powerful presence of obstetrician Nina, the film delicately navigates abortion stigma, systemic hostility, and the emotional labor of women forced to carry both life and loss in silence.

From the opening frames, April subverts audience expectations. Though minimal in dialogue and deliberate in pace, the film commands attention with its composition of bodies—both alive and spectral. Naked and clothed, the bodies that populate April seem caught in suspended animation, trapped between desire and despair, by turns vulnerable and resilient. One such body, almost alien in form, haunts the narrative like a spectral cipher—an adult female humanoid with sagging breasts and a concealed face. Her presence is never explained, lending the movie a speculative shimmer that never fully settles into genre convention. But while this element might suggest fantasy, April remains rooted in realism—one that aches with tension and quiet sorrow.

At the heart of April is Nina, portrayed by Ia Sukhitashvili with breathtaking restraint. As a rural obstetrician, Nina works long hours in an under-resourced hospital, often venturing into remote homes to perform abortions. The procedure is legal in Georgia, but deeply stigmatized—making her work dangerous not just medically, but socially and professionally. The April film is less concerned with dramatic outbursts than with the weight of silence, the quiet resolve of women like Nina who do their jobs without fanfare, despite emotional isolation and looming institutional consequences.

A death jolts this fragile world into motion—a newborn dies during childbirth, setting off an internal hospital investigation that soon draws scrutiny to Nina’s abortion work. What follows is not a thriller, but something more profound: an excavation of moral pressure and bodily autonomy, filtered through Nina’s growing sense of alienation. Despite her steely demeanor, loneliness envelops her. She has no friends to confide in, only patients and a former lover—David, a fellow doctor who is now tasked with investigating her.

Director Dea Kulumbegashvili uses this premise not for romantic tension, but as a canvas to explore Nina’s interior world. When Nina and David speak in one scene, the staging is unusually restrained. The camera lingers on David as he sits hunched in a stark hospital room. Nina remains offscreen for much of the exchange, her presence a distant echo. When she finally steps into frame, their embrace is awkward—halting and stiff, revealing more than any line of dialogue could. These subtle cues—hesitant gestures, pauses too long, eye contact too brief—say everything about Nina’s weariness and distance.

Kulumbegashvili first made her mark with Beginning (2021), a chilling drama that opens with a church bombing and builds its world in slow, atmospheric layers. In April, the director brings similar techniques: long takes, sparse dialogue, and an emphasis on visual storytelling over conventional plot. But if Beginning focused on religious patriarchy, April narrows its gaze to bodily autonomy, reproductive politics, and how a woman navigates her professional and existential boundaries within a patriarchal structure.

Nina’s solitude is punctuated by moments of natural beauty. In one of the film’s few peaceful sequences, she walks through a field blanketed in poppies, the red flowers bobbing gently as insects hum and wind rustles the grass. It’s a reprieve, but not a resolution. Even here, the film’s cinematography reminds us that Nina is still observed—still objectified, if not by people, then by the camera, which trembles slightly, never letting her fully rest. The world around her is calm, but the tension inside her simmers.

The April film reproductive rights narrative is not didactic. Instead of speechifying or overt political messaging, the film immerses us in discomfort, letting us feel the emotional costs rather than simply understand them. Nina's decisions are shaped not only by policy or law, but by exhaustion, by shame projected onto her, and by the crushing knowledge that the work she does, though legal, is considered taboo by many.

Symbolism runs throughout April. Cows crowd a night scene as Nina wanders a field surrounded by men and livestock, eventually confronting a restless bull—clearly not just an animal, but a metaphor for patriarchal pressure or unresolved anger. She says nothing. By this point, everything meaningful has been conveyed through her silence, her posture, and her haunted gaze.

The mysterious female creature that recurs throughout the film can be read in many ways: as a metaphor for Nina's fragmented psyche, a representation of motherhood's burden, or perhaps the specter of society's expectations of femininity. It’s deliberately ambiguous, much like Nina herself. Kulumbegashvili doesn't explain the presence, and in doing so, allows the viewer to sit with their discomfort and questions. The film offers no tidy answers, only a lingering sense of unease and reverence for Nina’s struggle.

Though the April movie may test viewers with its slow tempo and esoteric symbolism, it rewards patience with moments of piercing emotional truth. The film's strength lies in how it makes visible the invisible toll that caregiving and abortion work can exact on women, especially those operating at the margins. It’s a film about resilience, not triumph; about survival, not salvation.

Nina, with her tightly coiled hair and steady gaze, is a protagonist seldom found in mainstream cinema. She’s not charming or chatty. She doesn’t offer us a redemption arc. But her strength—quiet, complex, and fiercely autonomous—defines the core of April. And in this, Kulumbegashvili offers not just a character, but a tribute to women whose labor, physical and emotional, goes unnoticed by those who benefit from it most.

In its final act, April leaves us not with resolution but with recognition—a deep understanding that bodily autonomy, though legal in principle, remains contested in practice. And in the heart of rural Georgia, Nina continues to do her job, even if it costs her everything else.