Dea Kulumbegashvili’s debut feature made a major impression at this year’s San Sebastian Film Festival. “Beginning” scored four of the jury’s seven competition prizes: the Golden Shell for Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Actress for Ia Sukhitashvili. Variety confirmed the news.
Directed and co-written by Kulumbegashvili, the drama “centers on a close-knit community of Jehovah’s Witnesses in remote rural Georgia, and tracks the growing psychological torment of its leader’s wife (played by Sukhitashvili) in the wake of an extremist attack on their place of worship,” the source details.
Other women-directed films to take home honors include Isabel Lamberti’s “Last Days of Spring” and Fernanda Valadez’s “Identifying Features. The former won the New Directors’ Award and the latter the Latin Horizons Award. “Last Days of Spring” is a portrait of an extended family living on the outskirts of Madrid who are being re-homed by the authorities, and “Identifying Features” tells the story of a woman who embarks on a journey to find her missing son, a Mexican migrant who goes missing on his way to the U.S. border.
Head over to Variety to check out all of San Sebastian’s winners.
