Beginning Review: A Woman Seeks Peace Amid Persecution in This Astonishing Debut Beginning Review: A Woman Seeks Peace Amid Persecution in This Astonishing Debut
Streaming on Mubi, Georgia s Oscar submission uses slow-cinema tropes to inspired, devastating ends, marking its first-time writer-director as a major talent.
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Running time: Running time: 125 MIN.
At the midpoint of her astounding first feature “Beginning,” Georgian writer-director Dea Kulumbegashvili pulls off a brazen formalist coup that will either envelop you entirely in its world or freeze you out for good. On a glimmering autumn afternoon, put-together mother Yana (Ia Sukhitashvili) goes strolling with her pre-teen son Giorgi (Saba Gogichaishvili) in local woodlands, pausing at a leaf-carpeted clearing, where ringing birdsong and insect chatter fuse into a kind of white noise. Carefully, she lies down and closes her eyes. For six minutes, across one unbroken, tightly framed