Born in 1986, Dea Kulumbegashvili is Georgian writer/director based in Tbilisi. Her debut short film Invisible Spaces was nominated for a Palme d’Or du Court Métrage at the Cannes Film Festival in 2014 and was also the first film from independent Georgia to be part of the Official Competition at the Cannes Film Festival. Her second short film Léthé was premiered at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival in the Directors’ Fortnight selection and played in dozens of other festivals around the world.
For her debut feature, Beginning, Dea Kulumbegashvili was invited to the Cannes’ Cinéfondation Residency and the Sam Spiegel International Film Lab in Jerusalem where she won a prize, as she did at The Sofia Meetings and the Rotterdam Festival Hubert Bals Fund. The film Beginning was invited to be part of the Official Selection at the 2020 Cannes Film Festival as well as the San Sebastian Film Festival's Official Selection where she won four awards: Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay & Best Actress. At the Toronto International Film Festival she won the FIPRESCI Award, and the main slate of the New York Film Festival, among others. Beginning was selected to represent Georgia for the Oscars.