April Review: LFF 2024

A doctor’s career is at risk in enigmatic Georgian abortion drama April

Nina (Ia Sukhitashvili) an OB-GYN in a rural Georgian hospital comes under fire from management and families after a baby she delivers dies suddenly. Given that she has delivered thousands of babies this is unlikely to be the first time she’s lost a patient – so the reaction seems unjustified until we learn the true reasons for everyone’s judgement. Nina has been providing abortions to women in the local villages – something legal in Georgia but unsupported by the general population and particularly unwelcome in it’s smaller communities.

Through a story Nina tells about feeling useless to help her drowning sister when she was a child, we learn Nina’s motivations – she no longer wants to be afraid to help people. When David (Kakha Kintsurashvili) her ex-partner and only supportive colleague questions why Nina takes all this risk upon herself by providing procedures in secret, she insists that if it were left for someone less qualified to do then it would still happen, but people would die. She is refusing to leave women to drown.

April forces it’s audience to take a truly unflinching look at its subject matter. Childbirth and abortion scenes are shown in real time, close up, with painstaking attention to the women’s bodies. The abortion shown on screen seems primitive by Western standards (particularly as it’s being done in secret in someone’s kitchen) with everyone present aware of the trauma its recipient is going through even if it may be in the name of a better life.

As Nina is investigated for the death and continues to secretly see other patients, she engages in not only professional but personally risky behaviour; soliciting a number of dangerous sexual encounters with random men. Her motivations remain consistently mysterious as Sukhitashvili plays a largely internal performance and has little dialogue that isn’t about medicine. Director Dea Kulumbegashvili breaks up the central story with these encounters alongside lingering shots of the Georgian countryside, the ever changing nature contrasting the human interference with birth.

Whilst there’s a really strong central premise the problem with April is that is stretches about an hours’ worth of plot into a film that’s over two hours long. The protracted nature shots are a beautiful distraction, but they linger for so long that they don’t really serve the story. A further interruption is that quite a lot of time is given over to Nina being haunted by visions of some sort of monstrous version of herself without any explanation – though it’s never really clear if these are nightmares she is having or symbolic scenes that are purely seen by the audience.

Depicting a woman providing abortions as a faceless monster when the rest of the film largely portrays how caring and compassionate her actions are feels very jarring, and if we are meant to question Nina’s motives and morals further then enough development clearly hasn’t been put in to that side of the story.

Kulumbegashvili captures some really striking images; storms and sunsets and in particular a scene in which a man eats dinner at his kitchen table unaware it had served as his sister’s gurney only a few hours before. It’s just a shame that her overall vision doesn’t quite seem to come together as a cohesive picture. April mysteriously leaves you to draw you own conclusions, but the mystery is also ultimately frustrating.

April is playing at the BFI London Film Festival 2024 where it is in competition for Best Film. Wider release details have yet to be confirmed.