While studying film at Columbia University, Georgian director Dea Kulumbegashvili contemplated what it meant to belong somewhere.  When she returned to her home country she visited the small mountain village where her father used to live. Kulumbegashvili tells HFPA journalist Michele Manelis that while she was there, she got an idea for her first feature, Beginning. “I was dealing with a sense of estrangement and alienation, and what does it mean to leave? And can you really come back home? And I was questioning, what does it mean to belong?”

The movie is set in a small Jehovah’s Witness community and focuses on Yana, the wife of the community leader who is struggling with her own identity and desires. “There were people visiting my father, who are our distant relatives. And these people I could see that were treated as outsiders as well. And then I learned that they have turned and they became Jehovah’s Witnesses. And even though they never left their home, unlike myself, I sensed that they were dealing with the same feeling, and we’re having the same questions.”

She is not a religious person, but she was interested in exploring the subject through Yana. “I decided to make a film about a woman because I think that starting with my short films, this is what I am interested in, to look at the lives of people who would be secondary characters in maybe more mainstream narrative.”

She encountered some challenges while filming the movie.  “In Georgia, if you are a woman director, not everything you do or say is perceived with all seriousness as you intended actually. So I was a bit scared, but I knew that I just needed to do it and I need to be open for anything that happens.”

Listen to the podcast and hear what kind of challenges she faced as a director in her home country, Georgia; how she directed children; what kind of conversations she wishes the audience would have after seeing her film; who inspires her; what kind of thoughts she has on motherhood; what kind of role religion and spiritualism play in her life; how she rebelled against her grandparents; how an outsider’s perspective has helped her in the film industry; what kind of student she was; why she moved to New York; how making a movie made her closer to her mother; what was her obsession in film school; what kind of childhood she had, growing up close to the border of Azerbaijan; why she was the only kid going to her local library; when she got interested in movies; who is her mentor; what kind of work process she has; how she has spent her time during the pandemic; and why tea ritual was important for her at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.