Our extended considerations of organised religion, patriarchal society and how to be alone whistle through all the film's beautiful empty space, colouring and complicating it.

| Mar 23, 2021

It can be hard to divine much of a difference between beginnings and endings, but there's no mistaking the savage grace with which Kulumbegashvili blurs them together until they're one and the same.

| Original Score: B+ | Mar 3, 2021

In contemplating the horror of a subservient life, Kulumbegashvili has created a quite extraordinarily compelling film.

| Feb 18, 2021

Through this rigorous aesthetic, a distinctive point of view emerges.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 8, 2021

All compelling material soon dissipates into a plodding assemblage of static frames within which very little happens...

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 30, 2021

It is an incredible debut: so assured, masterful, and chilling in its tone.

| Jan 30, 2021

[T]here is an intensely ritualistic quality to "Beginning," a remarkable - and remarkably bleak - debut feature... that unfolds with spare, mock-ceremonial deliberation, pausing every so often for an exquisite twist of the knife.

| Jan 29, 2021

[A] blistering directorial debut.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 29, 2021

Amid moments of extreme stillness, violence crouches just out of sight, waiting for the characters-and the audience-to let down their guard.

| Original Score: B- | Jan 29, 2021

The boxy frame of the camera turns into a trap in "Beginning," the masterful debut feature by the Georgian filmmaker Dea Kulumbegashvili.

| Jan 28, 2021

Kulumbegashvili's style is confident, if derivative. Her technique now has to evolve away from these self-conscious influences.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 25, 2021

Sukhitashvili's performance is a restrained study in desolation and unraveling.

| Sep 23, 2020

The low-key, serene natural beauty of Beginning's setting provides a counterpoint to the often-disturbing events of the film.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 22, 2020

Beginning is alienating by design, but that doesn't make it easier to engage with as more than an exercise in meticulously composed despair. Still, those compositions!

| Original Score: B- | Sep 18, 2020