Beginning
This Georgian film about a Jehovah’s Witness community delivers visually stunning but coldly realistic slow-cinema horror simmering beneath the surface — tailor-made for fans of Haneke and austere arthouse.
The Georgian Jehovah’s Witness community faces violent opposition. Community leader David battles a Goliath-like enemy: a hostile, violent crowd of dissenters and an unsympathetic police force. David’s wife Yana has lost herself in the community and become subservient to the tyranny of her husband, but also all men collectively. Cut off from the outside world, Yana has had to abandon her identity and dreams to fulfill her husband’s religious calling. Every day she is haunted by the terror of abuse, from which she seeks to escape while finding a way to break its cycle.
The topical directorial debut of Dea Kulumbegashvili sheds light on the violence and discrimination faced by Jehovah’s Witnesses in Georgia through the story of an individual. The director treats fans of Michael Haneke and slow cinema to picturesque, but bleak, horror simmering beneath the surface, bubbling over in violent bursts. The film is a series of images of astonishing beauty, whose sweet colours conceal monsters. The viewer is captivated from the opening scene, which ranks amongst the most impressive in this millennium.
Jaakko Jokinen (translated by Adrian Murtomäki)
Trailer
