Dea Kulumbegashvili is a Georgian film director and writer. She studied film directing at Columbia University School of the Arts and media studies at The New School in New York. Dea’s filmmaking has been informed by her experience of growing up in a place with such a mix of ethnicities and nationalities. Dea was born in Oriol, Russia and raised in a small town called Lagodekhi at the foot of the Caucasus Mountains in Georgia, a former Soviet Union republic. In 2016, she became the first Georgian director to have a film accepted in Cannes — her stunning minimalist short Invisible Spaces. In 2020, her feature debut BEGINNING became the first Georgian film to win the Golden Shell for best film as well as picked up the best director, best actress and best screenplay honors. If Beginning is nominated for the best international feature award at the 93rd Academy Awards in 2021, it will be another first for Dea, as well as a first for Georgia.