April

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…

davidehrlich

“I fell asleep and when I woke up it was still the same shot” -Sebastian

Tomás Oliveira

Heavy Chantal Akerman vibes in this exceptionally gorgeously shot pro-abortion film.

Robert Daniels

A pro-abortion drama that manifests the weight of the loneliness that comes from performing a thankless, traumatizing job into a withered husk creature, empty space, devastating attempts at connection and a cacophonous soundscape. Absolutely flattened by this one. Major.

Brandon Streussnig

“French cinema is starting to ‘blob’ immigration,” wrote Serge Daney, “to ‘naturalize’ it, to make it a theme like any other.” It’s of course not Kulumbegashvili’s fault that this film won’t be shown in Georgia, and that’s part of her point, but there is something…

samwm

April is bleak and difficult. It's one of the most uncomfortable experiences I've had in a cinema, filled with numbing scenes of pain that the film lingers on. It features both a stillbirth and an abortion, shown unflinchingly. Yet April is more than just these moments. It…

Darren Carver-Balsiger

“i don’t need to be covered up. i’ve done nothing wrong.” a case of observational fatigue and crippling loneliness; the emotional labour, its force and the weight of it — dragging our heroine down. her failure hauntingly takes over — its threatening presence lingers,…

Jackie

O aborto ilegal vai continuar acontecendo, quer você queira ou não, e, num mundo que condena mais do que aceita uma alternativa diferente, existem essas pessoas que ainda resistem nas sombras, Nina, mesmo trabalhando com partos, também esconde seu outro lado ilegal para…

DamRibeiro

don't think this all comes together in the end but with a week's hindsight I am still quite moved and unnerved by what's here

fran hoepfner