September 2024 · 8 minute read

Slovenian filmmaker Sonja Prosenc is prepping her fourth feature, an untitled drama about “sisterhood and female liberation” that follows on the heels of her Tribeca premiere “Family Therapy,” a biting social satire-cum-family drama that has its European premiere in competition this week at the Sarajevo Film Festival.

She’s also co-developing the dark comedy-horror series “Little Yugoslavia” with North Macedonian filmmaker Teona Strugar Mitevska (“God Exists, Her Name is Petrunya”), which the duo will be pitching at the Bosnian fest.

Describing her next feature as “a drama with thriller elements,” Prosenc said the film is structured like a puzzle, where the narrative arranges each piece until it gradually constructs the worlds of three women. Set in Slovenia and Italy, it follows their separate lives as they move toward an inevitable convergence, their interconnected stories slowly assembling and culminating in a dramatic collision.

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Prosenc said the movie will “explore themes of freedom, sisterhood and the unpredictable power of chance encounters” while being “set against a backdrop of societal constraints.” It will reunite the filmmaker with previous collaborators including “Family Therapy” cinematographer Mitja Ličen, who lensed Laura Samani’s Cannes Critics’ Week premiere “Small Body.” Pic has Italian and Norwegian co-producers attached and is searching for a French co-producer.

Marking the next step in her continued evolution as a filmmaker, Prosenc said the project “artistically falls somewhere between” the tragicomic “Family Therapy” and her first two films. Her debut, “The Tree,” premiered in Karlovy Vary’s East of West competition in 2014 and was selected as Slovenia’s entry in the Academy Award race for best international feature film. Her sophomore effort, “History of Love,” bowed in the Czech fest’s main competition in 2018 and again represented her country for the Oscars.

“Family Therapy,” which premiered in Tribeca’s International Narrative Competition this year, follows a seemingly perfect family whose life is thrown into disarray when a young stranger arrives, exposing their hidden fears, flaws and dreams, and unraveling the deep-seated dysfunction in their relationships. The standout cast includes Mila Bezjak, Aliocha Schneider, Marko Mandić and Katarina Stegnar.

The film is written and directed by Prosenc and produced by Prosenc and Rok Sečen for Ljubljana-based Monoo. It’s co-produced by Marta Zaccaron and Fabiana Balsamo for Incipit Film (Italy), Tamara Babun and Matija Drniković for Wolfgang&Dolly (Croatia), Jarle Bjørknes for Incitus Film (Norway) and Dimče Stojanovski for Living Pictures (Serbia).

Speaking to Variety ahead of Sarajevo, Prosenc described “Family Therapy” as “an exploration of isolation,” situating the film’s protagonists — which she characterized as representatives of Slovenia’s “post-transitional nouveau riche” — in a story where their “progressive, humanistic values” are put to the test when they’re unexpectedly positioned to help another family in need.

“I was wondering about this dissonance between our values and our actions, when we are confronted with something in real life,” said the director. Of her main characters, she said: “I think they feel completely disconnected from the rest of society. And they want to feel disconnected. This is a very contemporary state of society in Slovenia. And, of course, worldwide.”

Mandić plays Aleksander, an ersatz patriarch and struggling writer two decades removed from his last success, and married to Olivia (Stegnar), a gallerist whose own desires and ambitions are thwarted by her failing marriage. Cultured and cosmopolitan on the outside, the couple soon becomes captive to its own prejudices and fears after an unwelcome knock on the door.

While Prosenc explained that it “would have been very easy to make this family a capitalist, conservative, rich family…afraid of what the ‘other’ represents,” she chose instead to set the Kraljs in a “more cultural milieu,” noting: “I didn’t just want to point my finger at someone who has different values from me.

“I wanted to open up space for empathy from the viewer. Because things are not black and white,” she continued. “And I think this allowed me to open up a possibility for the audience to see themselves — secretly, in the darkness of the cinema, where they can stay hidden from other people — that maybe they would do the same.”

Prosenc is also in Sarajevo alongside North Macedonian filmmaker Mitevska to pitch the dark comedy-horror series “Little Yugoslavia,” which they’ll be presenting during Sarajevo’s CineLink Industry Days, which runs Aug. 17 – 22.

“Little Yugoslavia” is set in an eerie, post-socialist apartment complex where residents vanish without a trace, and two vampire queens — mother and daughter drug addicts both over the age of 50 — are on a mission to purify the world.

Mitevska, who conceived of the eight-episode show, told Variety that she’d grown increasingly frustrated with TV series from the Balkan region and wanted “to create something that I would watch, something edgy, funky, liberating and entertaining.” Prosenc added that she was drawn to the concept’s “punk-rock energy” and was quick to come on board.

“I really felt like we should do something together, to shake up the scene in this area of regional quality series,” she said. “We felt like there is a lack of series that focus on female protagonists — women like her and me who are flawed, women who are not perfect and who dare to be like this.”

The series will be produced by Labina Mitevska through her production company Sisters and Brothers Mitevski, in co-production with Prosenc through her Slovenian outfit Monoo. Teona Mitevska and Prosenc have spent the past year developing the show through the French CNC’s Going European fund, a training program designed for authors involved in co-writing international series, and are looking for broadcasters and pre-sales during CineLink Industry Days.

Teona Mitevska’s last film, “21 Days Until the End of the World,” premiered in the Venice Film Festival’s Venice Days sidebar last year. Her previous feature, “The Happiest Man in the World,” bowed in the festival’s Horizons strand in 2022.

As Variety previously announced, the prolific filmmaker is currently working on her English-language debut, “Mother,” which stars Noomi Rapace as the legendary Catholic saint Mother Theresa. The film will follow seven days at a pivotal moment in her life, when she decides to leave the Loreto Entally convent in Calcutta and launch her own order. “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” and “Prometheus” star Rapace is serving on the feature film jury this week in Sarajevo.

The Sarajevo Film Festival runs Aug. 16 – 23.

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