“Please don’t write that down,” confesses Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović. I had asked about cinematic influences on her debut feature film, Murina, which premiered in the Director’s Fortnight category the previous night at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Executive produced by Martin Scorsese, Murina follows Julija (Gracija Filipović), an athletic teenager who rejects the obedience her father expects of her when his foreign friend pays a visit. Murina rightfully won this year’s Camera d’Or for best first feature – the same award Jim Jarmusch and Steve McQueen have won in the past.
The Croatian filmmaker and I meet at the La Quinzaine beach, a cabana situated just at the footsteps of the legendary Carlton Hotel. As I’m brought down to meet Kusijanović, there’s a surprise I did not see coming when she stands to shake my hand: she’s nine months pregnant.
“Oh wow, when are you due?” I ask.
“Now,” she laughs. What if the big moment happened during this interview? I try to make this interview less laborious than they usually are. “I take my influences from theater, from paintings, from locations, mostly,” she continues on about her inspirations. “I come from a family of painters and architects, so I think that most of it was born through that. Usually when I make my story boards, they’re always paintings. But also, visually, I build. Location is very important for me because location also informs the psychology of the character. And then seeing people move in that location is also what informs how they need to be portrayed.”
“So going off that, how much did the landscape direct you?” I follow up.
“Incredibly,” Kusijanović lets loose. “Because I was looking for that landscape. It was of course somewhere in the back of my mind growing up there. But for me it was very important to find a location without any vegetation. Even though Croatia is very green, and islands are very green. I was looking for places without any trees, because I wanted the characters to be as if they were on a plate like a raw meat: completely burned, exposed, under this heat in both their desire and violence.”
“In terms of casting, what did you see in Gracija for the lead of Julija?” I ask.
“Gracija [Filipovic] is a professional athlete. She’s a swimmer and dancer. She started as a non-actress in my short film, Into the Blue, and through that experience I got to know her better and understood that I wanted to make a feature film with her. And then I built the casting of everyone else around her. We would spend weeks with actors to test these synergies.”
The casting and costume choices seem to go hand-in-hand with the choice of locale, given how natural the swimsuits are on Julija versus her disdain for other clothing, “land” clothing. “She has a mastery of not so much the land but the water,” I add on. “And the difference in costume is very much an act of rebellion by her. When she’s in dresses, they don’t really fit well on her.”
“It’s very obvious when you put a character in an outfit they don’t belong to. It’s even referenced in the film, ‘I’m not gonna wear this. It’s not mine, it’s yours.’ But it’s also so rewarding when you give a person something they really feel as their second skin. Murina is all about skin, so we also tried to metaphorically dress Julija in that same way, with her skin. And she sheds different skins throughout the movie – one is from her family, and one is coming from the foreigner. That is a new skin, an improved skin. A skin which is braver and more persuasive for [going after] what she wants.”
“In directing the physicality of Julija, what was the seed you implanted in her mind to direct her? Because I could tell she was very much a master of her water environment.”
“Sometimes you have to direct others to give the right mood for her. That’s why it was very important to have the right team around her, because certain things need to remain hidden. Especially to such a young actress such as her. And it helped to spend a lot of time – over a month – with everyone together in a house where they lived like a family. They cooked and fished together. They built this real synergy.”
“Throughout Murina, she’s always in conflict. She’s never belonging to the on-shore environment. What would you say her central flaw is that drives the story engine of the film?”
Kusijanović has to take a moment to ponder. Then, a light bulb goes off: “She is quick to conclude,” Kusijanović declares. “She’s a teenager. She thinks she knows everything. She thinks she sees beyond things. She has strong convictions. And she’s very impulsive, very courageous. Which being courageous is a very good thing to be, but sometimes maturity and wisdom is lacking. Yet, she gets slapped throughout the film, and she readjusts quickly, which is a sign of intelligence, I think.”
“Where did you meet [Gracija] originally?”
“I did a casting for a music video. It was a little Croatian band. Actually, now, a bigger band – Silente – from Dubrovnik. I did a casting for kids for that specific video. And Gracija was in that casting.”
“What drew you to her?”
“She doesn’t have to speak to tell things,” she reveals. “For me, it was mostly to say less. She has [natural presence] in front of the camera. And it’s very interesting to watch her, for me at least. So for me it was a deduction of the script. [I’m always] finding opportunities where I can deduct on a script, on a shoot, and in post.”
“You’ve attended labs at the Berlin and Sarajevo Film Festivals, attended La Femis, Columbia University… You’ve won awards at these laboratories, festivals, and institutions, even been nominated for a Student Academy Award. How does it feel to be thrown into the beast of Cannes?”
“I am very very grateful and happy to be in Cannes, especially this year. Even though we’ve been in a lack of festivals for a year and a half, it’s been very difficult for all the people in the film industry. So this year is somehow special, it’s like reincarnation year. So to be part of the festival this year is like even more rewarding than any other. And I’m very grateful.”
“Murina is your first feature, what’s next for you?”
“I’m open to new opportunities. I never liked to be bound by like a specific thing… I’m always following the characters and complex stories and open to be surprised, to change. I am writing a couple things right now and one of them is set in New York. It’s a shadow metropolis and it’s kind of a woman confronting her tribe once she realizes her husband cheated on her.”
“And you’re based in New York, yes?”
“I’m in between places. I’m in between New York, Debrovnik, and Zagreb.”
“Does New York influence your work? Especially in this movie?”
“It’s very important sometimes when you make certain films to be very local. And at other times to have distance. And of course New York gives me distance from Croatia, and Croatia from New York. So yes, both places inform each other.”
“Do you plan on going back to music videos at all?”
“Why not? I’m always open to everything, y’know? It’s a great form because you can explore. You can do things that you can’t do in film.”
“It’s not very narrative friendly, though.”
“It could be. It could be. Anything can be exactly whatever you want it to be. And that’s what’s exciting. Otherwise we’re just, y’know, working inside some types of forms, which is not exciting.”
Murina most recently won awards at the Hamptons International Film Festival and the Slovene Film Festival, and will be screening at the Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival this month.
Featured image courtesy of First Films First.