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Yana, played by Ia Sukhitashvili, is the spirit of “Beginning.” (Photo courtesy of MUBI.)
Content warning: The film and this review depict instances, sometimes very graphic, of verbal and sexual assault, including gender-based violence.
This review contains spoilers.
The circuitous nature of life in “Beginning” arrests its viewer and its protagonist in a boxed film format, rendering both to the limits it allows. What follows is a wrenching devolution of faith, trust and a woman’s very being; the beginning to an end.
Director Dea Kulumbegashvili’s feature debut centers on a rural Georgian town just outside of Tbilisi, where Jehovah’s Witnesses come together in a small white church within the confines of a majority Orthodox Christian population and neighborhood.