“April” A Visceral movie that Whispers, Haunts, and Demands to Be watched

My most recent trip to TIFF took me to April, a Georgian artwork. April is not for the weak-hearted. It isn’t a film you simply watch. It’s a film you slowly absorb, frame by frame, breath by breath. This film, directed by Dea Kulumbegashvili defies conventional storytelling. Instead of a traditional plot arc, it immerses you in mood, silence, and symbolism. It unspools like a quiet fever dream, leaving behind questions that echo long after

The opening scene sets the tone immediately. A full childbirth is shown, raw and unfiltered. If you can stay with the discomfort, the film rewards you not with resolution but with deeper layers of understanding. This is cinema that doesn’t hand-hold. It challenges you to observe with patience and to use your creative judgment to connect the threads.

The story follows Nina, a nurse who performs illegal abortions in villages while working for a hospital in urban Georgia. But it isn’t really about the procedures or in the legal drama. It’s about the silence that surrounds them. The film is almost entirely visual, with sparse dialogue and barely any music. Instead, it relies on recurring sounds - especially Nina’s breathing to communicate emotion. The breathing becomes a kind of quiet score, one that reflects guilt, weariness, and something unspoken that haunts her.

Nina is reserved and emotionally guarded. We don’t learn her backstory through words, but through her stillness and the things she avoids. In one sequence, she drives through the countryside on her way to a village. We see the road through her eyes as she scans the landscape. At first it seems casual with almost an unpolished camerawork, but gradually it becomes clear it's her view and she’s watching the young men. It’s a subtle, heartbreaking way to show her loneliness.

There’s an especially powerful confrontation between Nina and the husband of a woman who lost her child. It’s one of the few moments where emotions erupt, and it underscores just how much these characters usually keep bottled up.

The film also introduces a strange, embryo-like creature. It appears again and again, breathing heavily, crawling across the floor, or simply staring. It’s grotesque and fragile at once. This figure probably seems to represent Nina’s inner voice :  her guilt, her fatigue, her buried emotions. We understand this even more when we see how she reacts to others. A colleague expresses interest in her, but she turns away, emotionally numb. Whatever warmth she once had has been replaced by detachment.

Director Dea uses visuals in place of exposition. There are long scenes of Nina sitting in fields or watching plants in the wind, while birds chirp in the background and scenes of rain falling on the streets. These are not filler scenes, and they hold meaning – signifying her numbness. They give space for emotion to surface. Often, the only sound is her breathing, which acts like a pulse throughout the film. The silence is not empty. It is full of tension, regret, and quiet resistance.

The most intense sequences comes when Nina travels to a remote village to perform an abortion for a deaf-mute girl. The atmosphere is heavy. You can almost smell the situation. There’s a dread in the air, something you feel even before the tragedy unfolds. Also, a moment when she performs the abortion and is forced to return to the house in the presence of the father when Nina's car gets stuck in the rain. The fear, silences feel very real. By this time in the movie- I guessed the director would show the act, unfiltered and almost where you can feel the pain. When news breaks that the girl has been murdered, it lands like a punch. The film doesn’t show the act. It only hints, leaving us to piece it together. The revelation that the perpetrator is a family member makes it even more chilling.

April doesn’t follow traditional storytelling. It’s open to observation, open to interpretation, and infused with symbols that might remind viewers of Eastern European art cinema. The strange creature, the silence, the tension in ordinary spaces:  these are not explained. They are left for you to sit with, to feel in your own time. Some scenes will stay with you not because of what is said, but because of what is suggested. You might find yourself replaying certain moments later, trying to make sense of a look, a pause, a breath. This is a film where less is truly more.

April is not an easy film to watch. But it’s a necessary one. If you let it, it will sit under your skin and whisper things you can’t quite name. Not for the faint of heart - but could be a good watch if you want to unsettle yourself.