‘April,’ One of 2024’s Best and Most Searing Festival Films, Sets U.S. Release Date

If April was the cruelest month for T.S. Eliot, this upcoming one’s certainly less cruel for filmgoers with a new movie called “April” finally hitting theaters.

As IndieWire can exclusive announce, Dea Kulumbegashvili‘s 2024 Venice Special Jury prize winner “April” will open from Metrograph Pictures on April 25 in select theaters.

Since it’s been a while since we saw “April” at the fall festivals, here’s the synopsis courtesy of Metrograph Pictures: “Skilled obstetrician Nina is accused of malpractice when a baby dies during delivery. The ensuing investigation threatens to expose Nina’s illegal sideline: offering abortions to local women. Nina remains fiercely committed to her patients, but she must walk a razor’s edge in order to survive as a pariah in a world which desperately needs her. Set against the backdrop of the starkly beautiful Georgian countryside, Kulumegashvili’s prescient sophomore employs a mesmerizing visual and sonic language to create an immersive experience about the resilience of the human will.”

IndieWire’s David Ehrlich raved about the movie out of Venice, writing, “There isn’t a horror director alive who wouldn’t kill to create frames as tense, ominous, and viscerally captivating as those of Georgian filmmaker Dea Kulumbegashvili, who applies her talents toward elemental character studies about rural women suffering under the yoke of patriarchy at the foot of the Caucasus Mountains.” This was after her 2020 feature debut “Beginning,” about a religious community shaken up by violent extremists, also wowed cinephiles.

Kulumbegasvhili also spoke with IndieWire circa the 2024 New York Film Festival about her experience directing “April,” which included witnessing live births and the aftermath of an actual murder. For this film, she reunites with “Beginning” star Ia Sukhitashvili, who plays the obstetrician.

Next up, “April” plays the 2025 Sundance Film Festival before its stateside premiere. The budding Metrograph Pictures, now headed up by former A24 exec David Laub, went on an acquisitions spree last year from Sundance through the fall festivals. Releases in the company’s wheelhouse the past year and coming up include “Good One,” “Gazer,” “The Kingdom,” and “Happyend.” Metrograph Pictures will also release the new Christian Petzold film, which started production last summer and could be headed to the Berlinale. That’s where the German director’s films usually premiere.