The movie “April” is a representation of Georgia’s unfortunate and cruel current climate regarding abortion.

A female obstetrician moonlights as an illegal abortionist with severe consequences in Georgian director Dea Kulumbegashvili’s altogether extraordinary second feature.

Abortion in Georgia is officially legal, though it may as well not be. A woman may request a termination up to 12 weeks into her pregnancy, but given the vehemence of public and political opposition to the practice, she’s unlikely to find a clinic that will agree to perform it. It’s a phantom right, then, its yes-but-no deception just one of the manifold ways in which women’s lives are curbed and constricted by a world that promises more liberty than it grants.

An expert obstetrician in a hard-up patch of Eastern Georgia, Nina (Ia Sukhitashvili) has become stoically accustomed to this oppression, using her abilities and relative social privilege to work around it where she can. But years of chafing against the system have come at considerable cost to her inner life — and even, in the most nightmarish interludes of Dea Kulumbegashvili‘s staggering sophomore feature “April,” her very sense of personhood.

Source: https://variety.com/2024/film/reviews/april-review-1236131293/