Venice 80: the short film by Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović for Miu Miu Women’s Tales

Land Giornate degli Autori, Venice Daysindependent and parallel section of the Venice Film Festival, which has reached its twentieth birthday, from 30 August to 9 September line up 10 films in competition, 7 special events, 8 titles in Venetian Nights, an evening dedicated to Jean-Marc Vallee and at the Québec cinema, 4 special screenings, meetings and dialogues with the authors.

As always, the Giornate, dedicated this year to Andrew Purgatoriwho was its president, and to the director Citto Maselliwho founded them in 2004, will contain within it, the two short films of “Miu Miu Women’s Tales”, Eye Two Times Mouth of the Mexican Lila Aviles and, on September 3, Stay away of Croatian Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic. From 4th September Stay away you can see it on the MUBI platform.

Alongside the presentation of the shorts, a program of conversations between 3 and 4 September – moderated by Penny Martin of The Gentlewoman – will address issues related to cinema in which women are the protagonists. Among the novelties, the creation of the Miu Miu Women’s Tales Committee: selection committee that will guide and accompany the series of short films in the future.

Alongside the co-founders Miuccia Prada and Verde Viscontithere will be director Ava DuVernay (author of the short film Women’s Tales #5 and present in competition this year with Origin), actress and director Maggie Gyllenhaal elto two-time Oscar winner for costume design, production and production design Catherine Martin.

Antoneta’s reflection on the power

Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic she made herself known in 2021, when her first feature film Murinewas presented in Cannes at the Quinzaine des réalisateurs, winning the Caméra d’Or, the award reserved for debutants. I woman met her on zoom.

Murine it told of a dangerous game between a father and a rich and powerful man, a game in which his wife and daughter were reluctantly involved. With Stay away did she go back to those atmospheres?
I have always been interested in reflecting on power, I wonder about its nature: is it something we have within us, or something that is granted to us? How often have we heard, over the past few years, the plea: “We must empower women”? We say this because women don’t have power. These are speeches that are not made about men, men have the power. Either they take power, or they are powerful, nobody gives it to them, they don’t need it. But if you receive it from someone it is not a real power: as it was given to you, so it can be taken from you. I wanted to explore these themes within a family that runs a business, where there are dynamics of oppression, inflated egos, chauvinistic shenanigans, and a woman facing betrayal that collides with her own ambitions. Because if you place yourself outside the tribe you are against the tribe. Stay away it’s a tranche de vieand it’s interesting that Miu Miu gave me total freedom to make it while the film is about the opposite, it’s about oppression.

Murine had led many critics to conclude that it was the product of a “female gaze”. It was like this? And is that the case for this short film?

It’s hard to think in terms of genre, I can only talk about my way of seeing the world which inevitably translates into what I do. Making films is telling the truth (“Photography is truth. Cinema is truth twenty-four times a second”, famous quote from Jean-Luc Godard, ed), or so is the truth for me, unaffected by pamphlets (The Female Gaze: Women as Viewers of Popular Culture by Lorraine Gumman, 1988, ed), by how we are told we should speak or look. In Murine there was a young woman of 16, intelligent, provocative, sensual, confused. A lot of things happen at that age. And they were all things that I had inside at 16. So it’s my look.

A woman in a man’s world

How was the production of Stay away?

First of all I saw the Miu Miu collection in March. She fascinated me, she had real character, and was extraordinarily right for the project I was developing. Creating synchrony between the collection and my story, which takes place in New Jersey, was simple. There is a woman who works in a male world, the business of construction and asbestos abatement. She is a very feminine woman, traditional but at the same time tempted to explore sexuality. The collection mixes a traditional style and an androgynous and masculine style. It was easy to create the dialogue between these two aspects, as well as to find collaborators for the project. I was lucky, I put together an outstanding and very mixed team in a short time. There is also an Italian, Luciano Vignola, at the sound design.

Interesting that fashion takes such a central role, in Murine the protagonist wore a bathing suit throughout the film.

True, but to do justice to Amela Baksic, the costume designer of Murine, and who also worked on this short, it took a year to design that costume. Amela worked on it with a Japanese company based in Los Angeles to find the right material and then made it in Croatia. We wanted that costume to reflect femininity, but also to be androgynous and with an animal component. An underwater animal that changes color when it is in the sun, among the rocks or underwater.

From Dubrovnik to New York

She now lives in New York where she also studied filmmaking. Does your country of origin remain important in your work? How does he combine the two worlds?

I grew up in Dubrovnik, a magnificent city: if you live in a place like that it is sure to influence you, to inform your taste. The place I come from is the core from which I always start, the genesis of each project. But I also want to make myself understood beyond the borders of my country. I arrived in the US when I was 22 and at 17 I was in Canada where I studied in a very remote village in Quebec. In New York I then continued my studies at Columbia. New York welcomed me, but it also challenged me. You never feel safe here, you are always on the edge and balancing takes energy.

The American film community has definitely embraced it. Murine had as executive producer Martin Scorsese. Hard to ask for more.

I have never felt more welcomed! As also from the festivals, Cannes, Berlin… New York is a beautiful community, a place where it is easy to relate different realities.

Is Balkan cinema a reality or just a label? The generation preceding his, that of Kusturica, Paskaljević, Tanović, has now left the field to a new lever. We have seen interesting things coming from Bosnia recently, Quo Vadis, Aida?, The Appointment… See what happens from afar?

I am always very present. I spend 4, 5 months a year in Croatia. I write there in the summer and also at Christmas, an important time for me and my family. I love that part of the year in Dubrovnik where it’s incredibly cold and the city is deserted. But I think what we are seeing is the result of the work that has been done for a long time. The wave is coming and it contains a large female presence. They are fearless women. I feel part of that society and that cinema.

Where does your interest in the dynamics of power come from, has the past of that place prompted reflection?

With your first works it is clear that you are also exploring yourself, trying to understand what your interests are. If I reflect back on the stories I tell, I find that they have a visceral aspect which is then, of course, put down on paper and rationalised. With this short maybe I want to provoke a little bit, to say that the power we feel we have isn’t really there. You really have the power when you swim against the tide and compare who gave you the power.

Power has an illusory element in it. If we convince ourselves that we have it, we put ourselves on the same level as God and lose sight of our condition which is that of mortal beings.

That’s a different power, I tell the power we have to take life into our own hands. That freedom. Don’t be oppressed. Have desires and energy.

What are its models?

From 6 to 18 I acted in the theater, but being an actress didn’t really interest me. I didn’t think about directing yet, but it fascinated me to look at people, to understand what they are hiding, what they are not aware of. I wanted to produce plays when I moved to New York, but working in production I ended up starting a project for a documentary about building unions. I was looking for a director, and not finding one, I shot him. It was revealing. I used to write stories since I was little, around the age of 8 I even published one, a self-published one, 9 copies! It all came together: writing, staging children’s shows in the streets of Dubrovnik, and directing a film. I just didn’t have a word to describe what I wanted. I hadn’t consciously wanted it, but it was there. The film that marked my life is undoubtedly the Mermaid. And thinking about Murine I would say there is a reason. But also Fanny and Alexander by Bergman, A wife by Cassavetes, Piano lessons, Blade Runner. I recently saw Close by Lucas Dhont that struck me.

And what are your plans for the future?

In this part of the world things don’t happen one after another, but all together. I’m finishing writing a second feature film and I’m working on a TV project. It’s very different from Europe where you can stay on a project for up to 5 years. But it’s not bad to do several things at once, it gives you more distance and perspective, even if it’s very romantic the European way of taking your time, sitting in a room and writing calmly until you find the right path.

The experience of Stay away Has your relationship with fashion changed?

Miu Miu Women’s Tales is a fashion brand and the characters wear models from the collection, but the focus is on telling the story. I’ve never seen the project as a fashion film, rather as a film of which fashion is a part. And in this case it is an important part. Each story also reflects the time in which it is conceived.

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