Hey. Antoneta how are you doing?
Hi. How are you doing, Thomas?
Yeah, pretty good.
You're based in New York, is that right?
That's correct.
How's how's life in New York?
Well,
I've been back and forth a lot in the last two or three years.
So, um. Yeah.
You know how New York is unpredictable.
It's always good that I've spent a lot of time during COVID
in Croatia, and I'm in editing movie going into production.
Then I moved to Mexico a little bit scouting for the next one, and yeah, it's
been.
It's been an interesting time, difficult and interesting times.
And, of course, we're here to talk about Murina.
You know, congrats on the movie.
You know, first and foremost,
what was it, a natural reaction when you found out
it was going to be the closing film for this year's Glasgow Film Festival?
I was so happy and very sad that I couldn't come in the same time.
My actress is going to attend it.
Yes. You know, I have a story about Glasgow.
I went to Glasgow
for a student exchange when I was 14
and it was one summer and that's
when I fell in love for the first time with a guy from Portugal.
He was also student exchange and he was 14 and we kissed
and he jumped in this
castle from his room to the kitchen.
It was like from Harry Potter, you know,
it was very fun.
I love Glasgow.
I'm so sad. I cannot be there.
So basically he had this kind of special place in your heart and that gets.
Definite to me.
Mean that maybe next year or a year after, if we are all still here, I'll be there.
After one in the golden camera.
I hope I can.
What is that sort of recognition, I mean, to you as a case that you're happy
you get that award, but you're even happier that the movie
is getting you know, that level of exposure.
For the movie.
That's very important to the movies that are made for the audience
to watch them, to live them, to, you know,
walk through their emotional twists and turns.
So this was very important for me
that the movie, because of Camera d'Or, got such a distribution
all over the world and classical distribution which is also,
I think, important for audience to create relationship with a film.
And in more in I played it over 65 festive
since July which is very very good and one 23 awards
that means that audience responds very well to it
and that that is that is the
most important to build that relationship with your audience.
As for festival what it brings to me I have to be honest with you
I have never felt any of the glitter
and shine of Murina because I've never gone to any festivals.
For me, it was really over Instagram watching these accounts
as if someone else is like, Yeah,
I mostly did all these interviews from this room.
And yeah, I hope that when things
shift and change a little bit, I'm going to have more opportunity to
maybe not with this film, but with another one tool
to be presented to these people in the screening rooms.
Yeah, you'll be dining out on 16 The glitz and glam
of of Glasgow again or you know, and other festivals are happening.
No, I haven't had a chance to feel that.
Is that what you said? Yeah, yeah.
No, no, I haven't.
In Cannes, I wasn't Cannes, but I was nine months pregnant.
I delivered my son
12 hours before I received Camera d'Or,
so I really was not even at the closing ceremony,
you know, and then it was the, you know, four months of breastfeeding.
And I went to Sarajevo with my son.
He was 20 days old.
It was difficult. It was difficult.
Now it's different.
I think I can travel more.
But also, you know, being in U.S.
and travelling to European festivals is very different.
Because being in Europe, you can just fly two days there,
three days there and you're back home.
But here it's like, you know, 16 hour flights.
Just like your son could have had
his first film festival at Cannes if you took him to the
cinema.
Cannes has
granted him lifetime accreditation.
He was born
basically the day when I won the camera d'Or... almost.
There should be I can, you know, crechefor kids that might be an idea.
There is no baby club.
Oh, nice.
Yeah.
That's pretty cool... you should always say, you know, travelling back and forth
between New York and your home country
of Croatia,
the film itself is stunning.
How much easier does it make it for you, the nature to have that sort of setting
you know, Croatian.
It's natural, natural beauty.
It's interesting.
People, of course, perceive Croatia's natural beauty because most of them
don't live on the sea side.
And, you know, it's not an easy life.
It's dreadful, it's hard, it's humid, it's hot
in the winter.
It's too cold in a summer.
It's too hot. There's no shade.
It's it's difficult.
To wake up at four and fish people who live out to the sea,
they don't go to swim, you know, and they don't eat fish.
They want to eat meat.
And I was trying really hard
to avoid its beauty and not presented as a postcard.
And that was both a lens and my intention, as you would say,
Seppala, is really compassion.
You know, it's not a nice hewed countryside.
And we were focussed on bringing this you know,
simmering tensions and desires and anger and impulses
that were lying underneath the skin and
focus on that.
And that leads the story instead of the scenery.
The scenery supports that because being at a place with no shades
like burning it, it's a it's a how it's actually how those islands are for me
comes from this area
where I don't want to be.
There's some great,
some great diving scenes
and the movie, what was that experience?
You know, shooting those and how challenging was it,
you know, to get was great.
And the water, that's my, my favourite thing, you know,
first of all because not many people know what to do underwater.
So you can tell them anything
so no I'm joking but of course I went to shoot that
all my favourite diving spots where
I went as a child
and it takes a very interesting preparation
to shoot underwater because exactly the same as above the water, right?
You have actors and then you have a camera crew
and then you have assistants and then you also have divers.
They're taking care of the safety of the people who are focussing on
other things and their own safety and the water.
So it's a complex thing and
there's the
same as there's above water, whether, you know, there's also underwater
fog that is big mixtures of the currents of hot and cold water and all these
kind of things you would never think about like underwater wind.
But it's really great because it's
another state.
It's like shooting in the universe, I guess.
Yeah.
And actually I thought that's an element too, for sure.
Yeah.
Everything needs to be decided before how to go about it.
Both. So everybody needs to be clear.
It's you really need to be very well oiled machine to execute the scenes
underwater where you're not watching only an actor underwater,
but entire
en an emotional turn
that is more difficult and the most fun to do.
I love it.
I go physical like you are in the water while you're directing.
A few years ago you did.
the short Into the Blue,
you know, and you can see the parallels between this and Murina
that you know, at that point being able to make an entry that that idea
you want to
you know, you wanted to go back and explore
and of course you know, making your feature debut.
No, I didn't.
I just started working withGracija Filipović
my and non actress actress and Murina she was yeah.
12 at the time and
it was really very great to work with her.
It was amazing experience and I wanted to write a feature film for her.
So just after we had premiered in Berlin,
I started writing more and having her in mind
and really adjusting the script to what
the best that she could bring to screen from herself.
Yeah, I think it definitely shows.
And also she was nominated for that award that no, but
yes, film festival.
One thing that also comes across, it's the kind of central point is the,
you know, the family dynamic, you know, that
toxicity, I suppose, just may be the polite way of putting it.
How tricky was it for you to get that dynamic and that balance
and those relationships.
You mean with the actors working?
Yeah, yeah.
Just yeah, it's family constellation.
You know, I brought them all to an island in the house,
and they lived there for a couple of weeks together, I think, before.
And I would wake Leon [Lucev] up at
4 a.m., and I would tell him to wake everybody up in the role of Ante.
And we would go fishing and
they cook together.
They were in the character for six, 7 hours at a time.
I would tweak when they go out of the character, like,
you know, as if I was more fly in the wall.
But we were creating the world that it's outside of the screen.
We were basically
working on all the possible dynamics and scenes that I didn't write.
So that once we come on set, these scenes were second nature
and we didn't have to rehearse them and, you know, take the energy
and juice out of what had to be recorded on screen.
Yeah.
Think some of those exchanges we see the, you know, the characters go through
a pretty intense playthrough and perhaps.
It was great because they were such a character, different type of actors.
You know, Gracija was a child and a non actress.
And Mel likes to tackle the role in like almost as a stray dog come in and
and Danica [Curcic] from this more of, you know
Danish theatre and cinema
but a different thing she came and played came from Hollywood
and both films are really creating different dynamics.
So to marry those people together, to be a family
with a lot of history it was it was challenging.
But somehow their backgrounds really like
somehow synchronicity feed into these roles and
strengthen it.
I quite like, you know, one of the ideas, you know, where Julija has been
discouraged, you know, from, you know, from aiming big
you know, for you as a director, did you find that quite easy to tap into
Was it quite easy for you to relate to that idea?
Yes. We are often told that, you know, I can totally relate to it
because in Croatia I didn't study directing.
Right.
Because that was not
I didn't know any female director in Croatia when I went to school.
It's hard to tackle
the problem when you are in it.
And part of it,
you know, and that is so insightful about Julija's character
because she has a wisdom
that she would not really maybe in reality have entirely because she has.
It's from the fate.
I was in Croatia and
I really fell something very specific.
I felt that they were going to cut my legs off before I arrive anywhere,
and I needed to leave
you know, I needed to leave and
UC has its own dynamics
and different ways in this business, but it also, for me
somehow was an easier place to find my calling and honour it
and and do what I'm doing right now that I don't think
I could have ever done in Croatia, to be honest.
I just you know, one final question before you go.
What is it that you're working on at the moment?
You mentioned that you're doing some scouting and Mexico for the project.
I'm I'm doing a project about
a mother and daughter relationship there.
It's not quite like Morena.
They are much older, but
I like to say it
like elevator pitch. It's
beautiful colours and dark sensuality.
I can leave you a bit of that
sense. Intriguing.
Well, Antoneta, thanks so much for your time.
Best of luck with the movie's release.
Thank you.
And hope you enjoy your classical.
Thanks a lot. Take care.