Growing up in the shadow of the Caucasus Mountains in rural Georgia, Dea Kulumbegashvili was one of the few young women who didn't become a teenage bride and mom.
Her classmates were married off young or faced rape and domestic violence, and they struggled to pursue their education or develop a successful career, Kulumbegashvili said on Morning Edition as she discussed her new film, April.
The feature drama is a provocative and haunting portrait of a woman who performs home abortions in this same region for free, outside of her regular job as an obstetrician at the hospital.
Her patients don't have the means to pay for the procedure and, in some cases, were raped. The film was largely shot in secret at a time of increased abortion restrictions in Georgia. Images of the gritty challenges these women face contrast with their bucolic surroundings — poppy fields and cherry groves with the mountains rising in the distance.
Worldwide, there has been growing access to the procedure in recent decades. But there are a few exceptions where access has been rolled back, like El Salvador, Nicaragua, Poland and the United States, where federal protections for abortions were overturned in 2022.
Kulumbegashvili spoke with NPR's Leila Fadel about what inspired her to make her film.
The following excerpt has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Interview highlights
Leila Fadel: I want to start with what inspired you to shoot a film about a doctor who is risking everything to give abortions to women in rural Georgia.
Dea Kulumbegashvili: Well, first of all, this is the place where I grew up. I lived there until I was 17 and this is where my family lives until now. I go there at least once a year, and I used to meet my former classmates who were my age and they had like eight children. When we were 15, my classmates started to get married and it was not something they wanted to do, but it was mostly either like encouraged or arranged marriages or kidnappings, which was also kind of part of how the marriages would be arranged. I was very lucky that my father was very critical of all of this and he kind of made sure that we would not end up getting married this way. And, I guess, out of luck because I was born into a family which prioritized my education and my future, I was able to have a profession and to go on and to make films, while many people from my childhood, like my best friend, for example, they were not able to make the same choices at the end.
Fadel: So is this film about women and choice?
Kulumbegashvili: In a way it is because because even for the character who was raped repeatedly in the film — and we understand that she had several abortions already — maybe she would want to keep a child, but she doesn't even have that choice.
Fadel: And this is one of the women to whom Nina, the main character, the doctor, is repeatedly giving abortions. The woman's mother asks the doctor to give her abortions.
Kulumbegashvili: Yes. If a woman gets pregnant as a result of the rape in rural Georgia, most of the times, like they can't obtain abortions because nobody really cares about how these women would live with the children born after the rape, because it's considered to be a woman's responsibility to take care of a child no matter what, and to make this choice is considered to be a woman's sin — still not not a man's for a weird reason. But even if a woman would want to keep this child, she would not be able to do it because it's a shame for the family and they need to do everything in order to kind of like delete all the trace of what happened.
Fadel: And in this part of Georgia, abortions aren't legal?
Kulumbegashvili: So there is a gray area in a way in all of Georgia, basically, because officially abortions are legal. But up until 12 weeks it's possible to get an abortion with the pill specifically, but it's kind of impossible to get an abortion at the end of the day, especially outside of a capital and outside of like two major or three major cities in Georgia, because every hospital makes their own decisions whether they to practice abortions or not, and most of the hospitals just don't practice abortions, and there is no law that requires them to practice abortions, basically. It's encouraged on the government level, on the official level, that abortions are kind of a huge taboo and it's almost impossible to obtain an abortion other than if it's a medical emergency, obviously, that involves women's health. And it's not possible to find the pill at any of the pharmacies.
Fadel: So it's not technically illegal, but it's pretty much impossible if they don't go to the big cities.
Kulumbegashvili: Yes.
Fadel: And you embedded in a birthing clinic for this film, right?
Kulumbegashvili: Yes. I was able to spend a year there.
Fadel: A year? Wow. This isn't a documentary. It's a fictional film. Why was it important to spend that much time in a birthing clinic? You actually film in graphic detail in this movie, both a natural birth and a C-section.
Kulumbegashvili: At that point, I myself did not have a child. My child was born after I finished shooting, actually, during post-production. It was really important for me to not invent the details, what it means to be a doctor, but rather to actually make a film which would include all the people who actually practice this profession. It was really invaluable for me as a filmmaker to stay in a clinic for a year with my lead actress and with other actors, from time to time, and with a cinematographer. They really welcomed us and they showed us what their lives really are made of. It was a very humbling experience for me to understand that. I didn't need to invent anything. I could just see all these people doing something which was so much more important than cinema in a way. We became part of their process rather than the opposite.
Fadel: Abortion is a very polarizing and difficult topic, at least here in the United States. Did you face challenges in Georgia as you made this film?
Kulumbegashvili: Well, yes. I don't even know how to talk about it because the film has never been screened in Georgia. It's being totally kind of hidden and it kind of doesn't exist because it does talk about something which the government really didn't want us to talk about in a way. The government does encourage in a way violence against women because it goes largely unpunished or it goes very mildly punished, I would say. And there is no education involved in this field and in many places outside of the big cities in Georgia, women really do not even think that they can divorce and take their children with them, because there is no support in cases like this. It's a very controversial topic and at the moment I don't see a possibility to engage in this dialogue because I don't think there is a readiness from the authorities to actually talk about this.
Fadel: It sounds like what you wanted was to start a conversation about the things that you witnessed and that you saw and that women went through. And now it can't be screened anywhere in Georgia. And this is a film in your native language about where you grew up.
Kulumbegashvili: Yes. There was always a choice to me that I could make this film outside of Georgia. But it was a very conscious decision for me. I wanted to make it in the place where I grew up because in a way, it's really to all the people who I consider being my friends and who I grew up with and who I deeply and dearly love. But even they have not seen the film. Even for the actors, who did a great job and especially for the main actress [Ia Sukhitashvili], I wish the film would be screened in Georgia so her work would be recognized, but it's just not. It is disappointing, but I understand that as a filmmaker, sometimes you need to step back because this is not only about a film and I just don't want to put anybody in a difficult position now, especially people who helped me.
Fadel: So who will see it?
Kulumbegashvili: I guess people outside of Georgia will see the film. But in Georgia, it's like the film does not exist. Basically, I guess there was a choice which was made by the Minister of Culture to not engage in any conversations and totally disregard the film.
Fadel: Just to make sure I understand, are they banning it? I mean, how is it not being distributed?
Kulumbegashvili: So basically, like they don't need to officially ban it. It's unofficially banned because it's kind of like nobody would take a risk to show it.
Fadel: With the resistance in Georgia to the film, do you think you'll be able to make another film in Georgia anytime soon?
Kulumbegashvili: No. One thing I know for sure is that I cannot make a film in Georgia in any foreseeable future. I did make this film largely in secret, and I don't think that I would be able to do it again. If I go there and make a film about something which would be not addressing any problems or any issues or how people really live, maybe there would be a possibility, but I don't think I would want to do something like that, and to make films that I want to make for that, I don't think it's possible.
Fadel: Now that it's out in the world and people are watching it. What do you want them to take away from it?
Kulumbegashvili: I really hope that it does open a window into the parts of the world — not only Georgia — which have even much harsher and much bigger problems. I want to understand how much we should value maybe the rights that we already have and to be aware that there is a possibility of losing maybe those rights as well. I think we need to be aware that women's rights are not something which are set in stone because a big part of our world is still struggling with very basic and very fundamental rights which women do not have.
Fadel: It was a hard film to watch, honestly. You're unsettled when you finish the film for a long time over what's happening to these women. You have these beautiful shots of the rural countryside of Georgia, but then these really in some cases violent, in some cases implicit or explicit images of birth, of abortion. What was your goal here with the way you made it?
Kulumbegashvili: Well, my goal really was to somehow make the experience of the main character, of Nina, very tangible. I wanted her to bring us inside those houses, to bring us to these women. And I wanted to feel what she feels, even though she feels very distant and maybe we really never know what she's thinking about, and to experience this really spectacular nature of my home region. It's important for me to show it all, because together with the violence, it's important to understand that there is also all this beauty and it's part of the life there as well. It's true that this film is hard to watch. And recently I was thinking that maybe only now I started to get out also from the experience of making it, because it was a difficult experience for me as well.
Fadel: Really?
Kulumbegashvili: Yes, because I would see things which obviously maybe are not directly part of the film, but I was going into the houses to talk to women. I could see them having scars and like obvious signs of violence in their lives. And then they don't want to talk about it.
Fadel: So women who are dealing with domestic abuse of some kind.
Kulumbegashvili: Yes. And there would be children there. And when you're there and when you see things every day, somehow the film shaped into what it is and there is maybe a sense of rage in it. I don't think it's hopeless. It's possible to see how much Nina feels empathy and there is a possibility of love, and it's just some sort of maybe desperate scream to be seen by all the women who are in this film.
The broadcast version of this story was produced by Claire Murashima. The digital version was edited by Majd Al-Waheidi.
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