Jehovah’s Witness missionaries are often attacked for their religious beliefs anywhere around the world.

In Beginning, Georgian filmmaker Dea Kulumbegashvili shot in luminous 35mm long takes that boldly evokes a cinematic revelation of telling an enthralling story of a woman’s resilience facing communal hostility and violence.

The film stars Ia Sukhitashvili, Rati Oneli, and Kakha Kintsurashvili. Kulumbegashvili directed and wrote the screenplay with Rai Oneli.

Here’s the official synopsis:

In her striking feature debut, Dea Kulumbegashvili uses rigorous, compositionally complex frames to tell the devastating story of a persecuted family of Jehovah’s Witness missionaries from the perspective of a wife and mother. Following a shocking act of arson on the place of worship that she and her husband have established in a remote village outside of Tbilisi, Yana finds herself descending into a spiral of confusion and doubt. Her suffering only exacerbated by her debased treatment at the hands of the local police.

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The film was an official selection at the 2020 New York Film Festival and the 2020 Cannes Film Festival. It won the Fipresci Prize at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival and four major prizes at the 2020 San Sebastian Film Festival. It is an official Georgian entry for Best International Feature for the 93^rd Academy Awards.

Beginning streams on MUBI service in the United States beginning January 29.

Watch the trailer below. Let us know what you think.

Source: MUBI