Rating: NR | Runtime: 134 minutes
Release Date: April 25th, 2025 (USA)
Studio: Metrograph Pictures
Director(s): Dea Kulumbegashvili
Writer(s): Dea Kulumbegashvili

What should I be scared of?

There’s a deluge of rain showers and multiple vignettes of flowers along the Georgian countryside, but this month of April ultimately delivers mud, violence, and futility. Dea Kulumbegashvili’s film doesn’t simply pile such things solely onto the head of her lead Nina (Ia Sukhitashvili), though. No, every woman on-screen suffers from them. Even some men who dare allow themselves the progressive thought that science and humanity should come before apathy and control. While the latter can still turn their head and pretend to ignore what’s happening, the former cannot. Neither the abuse they fall victim to nor the reality that striving to help feels less fulfilling than it does hopeless.

We meet Nina sitting in her boss’s (Merab Ninidze) office to explain what happened during a delivery gone wrong. Also at the table are her OB/GYN colleague David (Kakha Kintsurashvili) and the husband (Sandro Kalandadze) of the patient. He’s there under the pretense of wanting to know why his son died five minutes after being born, but he really wants the other men in the room to blame Nina. Not because it was or might be, but because she is a woman and rumored to be conducting illegal abortions down in the nearby village. She’s not only “unqualified” to bring life into this world (despite a long career of doing exactly that), but he believes her to also be a murderer. Nothing she says would assuage that fact. Nothing the men say would either.

This is Nina’s life: a disrespected caretaker surrounded by toxic men who literally see women as property. She’s delivered most of their children and yet she’s been marked as the devil by cleaning up their messes while seeking to educate the often very young brides who aren’t ready to be mothers on how to postpone conception. And it all must be done in secret. No one can know about the contraception because women are supposed to provide their men as many children as “God sees fit.” No one can know about the abortions or most of the pregnancies themselves. It begs the question why the unfortunate mother at the start never registered her condition to receive the support needed to keep her baby safe. Did she even want it?

What intrigues beyond her career are the ways that those who sympathize with what Nina does also try telling her its unnecessary. Some implore her to have her own child as though children are the sole purpose in life. Her independence is seen as a threat; her duty to keep oppressed and raped women alive is less important than keeping her job and freedom. Nina is constantly asked why she’s alone because her allies remain indoctrinated regardless of their progressive tendencies. Yes, they are open-minded to the reality that she provides a necessary service, but they are still bogged down by the conservative gender norms driving their traditional values. And the random men she solicits for companionship—since she knows no man would willingly stand-by her choices—are a coin toss on whether they hurt her instead.

It’s no wonder Kulumbegashvili splices in nightmarish glimpses of a deformed Nina, naked and devoid of facial features. I was reminded of Alberto Giacometti’s sculptures of stretched and rough figures struggling to maintain their humanity under the weight of existential dread. This is how Nina sees herself—a nondescript entity moving through the world as a pariah some of the women she helps even loathe if for no other reason than that her existence reminds them of their pain. She’s not allowed a life of her own because it would get in the way of her mission. As she tells David early on, “Besides this job, I have nothing to lose.” It’s true. The village, however, has everything to lose without her. Tragically, they refuse to admit it aloud.

Shot as a series of static set-ups in full-frame, April proves a masterclass of blocking so each sequence maintains a sense of drama without camera movements. A couple moments include a pan and others (mostly exposition shots) allow motion via handheld, first-person perspective, but the majority of the film dares us to not look away by holding us frozen on uncomfortable conversations (the moment Nina’s boss leaves her in the office alone with that grieving husband, we know it won’t end well), real-life birthing scenes, and an entire abortion procedure focused only on the bare midriff of the patient with the back of her concerned mother filling the left side and her bent legs going off-screen on the right. Kulumbegashvili ensures we understand the gravity and potential for violence via silent stares of barely concealed trepidation.

While the main through line is discovering whether Nina will lose her job due to the malpractice claim, that danger is the least of our concern once we begin to follow her day-to-day. Maybe an attempt at companionship will leave her bloodied in a ditch. Maybe one of her teenage patients will get caught with birth control pills or an abortion will go wrong and she’ll be forced to confirm the rumors—both leading to jail time. And what of the young woman she’s been sent for to help by Mzia (Ana Nikolava)? This ordeal both epitomizes why Nina’s work is crucial to the survival of her patients and why she’s always one mistake away from perhaps getting killed herself. Because we know the answers to the questions Mzia keeps dancing around and that there’s zero chance it ends well.

And through it all lies an impressive performance from Sukhitashvili. Between the demand of the long takes and the constant state of fight or flight uncertainty, we find ourselves mesmerized by every movement and expression. Her Nina is risking everything with each act she takes—her job leading to tragedy is enough to put her in the crosshairs of a community desperate to ruin her because she has the gall to be an unmarried, childless, career woman who cares about the wives, sisters, and daughters being fed to the wolves for simply existing. You cannot dismiss its politics as just exposing how rural Georgia treats its women either, not when there are anti-abortion laws being passed in America now too. Anyone still pretending this is a cautionary tale is either delusional or complicit.

---

Ia Sukhitashvili in APRIL; photo credit Arseni Khachaturan, courtesy of Metrograph Pictures.