In this interview, Croatian filmmaker Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic discusses her Caméra d’Or winning feature film, Murina. This interview is part of our Establishing Shots series of interviews with directors discussing their first feature film.
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Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic’s debut film, Murina, is a gorgeous, thoughtful exploration of teenage girlhood, abuse, and finding your own way out of oppression. The film opens underwater, where seventeen-year-old Julija (the very talented newcomer Gracija Filipovic), and her abusive father, Ante (Leon Lucev), are hunting eels. It’s a bold sequence that takes its time, letting us revel in the rhythms of the sea before we even see any humans. By introducing us to this foreign underwater world from the start, Kusijanovic establishes the film as one that is also working on a metaphorical level, even as it has some social realist approaches and preoccupations.
As Kusijanovic puts it, Julija is a “person of the sea,” never happier than when she’s diving in the vast, cool blue water. It’s a stark contrast to the harsh, hot prison that is her home in an island village in Croatia, where her father regularly literally keeps her under lock and key. Coming from a rural working class family, Julija feels trapped, and is desperately looking for an escape — not just from her father, but from the dead-end town.
Set over the course of a week in the summer, the film pivots around the visit of family friend Javier (Cliff Curtis), a rich businessman from New York whom both Julija and Ante hope will solve their problems. Javier rides in like a knight in shining armour from the new world who, as Kusijanovic notes, “over-promises and under-delivers.” Ante hopes to persuade Javier to buy their land, and Julija sees Javier as her escape route, if only she can help him rekindle his old romance with her mother, Nela (Danica Curcic). Nela, who has been disappointed by Javier before, is the only one without expectations.
Julija inhabits the confusing teen girl space of being treated, by turns, as a child and as a sexual object. People accuse her of seductively walking around naked when she does household chores in her simple one-piece bathing suit. At the same time, her father orders her to an early bedtime if she provokes him. When Javier gives Julija a designer bathing suit, it serves both as armour to embolden Julija to stand up to her parents, and highlights the curves of her womanly body. We might therefore expect her to use her sexuality to get Javier to help her leave; it’s interesting that Julija tries to use her mother’s, instead, perhaps because it’s something she’s even seen her father try to control.
Kusijanovic’s script, co-written by Frank Graziano, is very nuanced about the experience of abuse. Within a few minutes, Julija and Nela can go from allies against Ante to opponents. Alone, they can commiserate about their mutual suffering, but as soon as they hear him approach, Nela immediately takes his side and participates in his abuse. From the start, Julija sees Javier as the shinier alternative to her father. He pays her special attention in part because he’s aware of Ante’s abuse from the start. But he also never intervenes to help her. Out of desperation to escape, Julija is slow to spot these warning signs.
Depressingly, none of the adults in Murina can be trusted, so Murina becomes the story of a young woman finding her own inner strength and power, when no one else can save her. There’s a sequence near the end that will make or break the film for people. When Julia gets locked in a storage building by her father, she finds her way out by diving into the sea and following an eel to safety.
Even when writing it, Kusijanovic remembered thinking it sounded “crazy.” I loved it. It works extremely well on a metaphorical level, but it’s a bit fantastical. Yet the fantastical elements don’t seem out of place though because the film’s underwater scenes and idyllic setting already serve as otherworldly elements that take us out of Julija’s harsh reality. By leaning into the fantastical and metaphorical, Kusijanovic finds a way to let Julija triumph by finding strength in herself, without ever trivialising the seriousness of her predicament.
I first saw Murina at Cannes 2021, where it premiered in the Director’s Fortnight, before picking up the prestigious festival-wide award for best debut feature, the Caméra d’Or; previous winners include Jim Jarmusch, Naomi Kawase, and Warwick Thornton. Back in October, after the film screened at TIFF, I sat down with Kusijanovic for an in-depth interview over Zoom about the making of Murina.
On coming up with the idea for the film Murina
Seventh Row (7R): Where did the idea for the film Murina come from? What made you want to tell the story?
Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic: I did the short film Into the Blue (2017) prior to Murina. It was the world that I’d observed during the summers: children set free on the rocks, completely unattended and wild. Then, I made Into the Blue [set in that milieu], and it was great to stay in that world [with Murina], with these characters and the actress Gracija Filipović. I decided to write a film for her. Murina was collective impressions of [the] Croatian mentality, and that world that I feel very familiar with, the island life.
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Shooting the underwater sequences in the film Murina
7R: How did the motifs of diving and swimming come about?
Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic: I used to dive a lot as a child. My grandmother would take care of me during the summer, and we were always staying on an island. I kind of had my own cave and a little doll house under the water. I would dive under and rearrange the rocks underwater, for as long as I could hold my breath. Being underwater was always a different aspect of the summer for me.
In Murina, I really wanted it to be the subconscious of Julija: the place where she has freedom, and the place where she can express all of her emotions, even spill blood.
7R: What were the challenges of shooting all of that underwater?
Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic: Of course, safety is always very important. We had to have a lot of technical preparation and organisation, knowing exactly what the shots were. It leaves very little to improvisation.
Once you dive underwater, for each person that is in front of or behind the camera, you need an additional person that is just watching them for safety. It ends up being a big crew underwater, up to ten or thirteen people. And [there’s] me above the water with a speaker, so they can all hear me at the same time underwater. I would watch it live, as well, with the camera because they can always [nod or shake their head], and I see it on my monitor.
Developing the aesthetic for the film Murina
7R: How did you work with your cinematographer to develop the aesthetic for Murina?
Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic: Hélène [Louvart] is just an incredible cinematographer and human, and it was really a pleasure to create with her. She came to Croatia three times before the production. First, to feel out the main location, which is the house. The second time, we went to scout the rest of the locations. We stayed together for some twenty days, just thinking about how we wanted to tell the story. We also did some rehearsals with actors to feel how the body moves within the frame. For Julija, her physicality both underwater and above is so important. It is very important to capture that sensuality — the part that is unaware of itself.
For me, architecture is very important. Depending on where people live, in what types of natural and physical spaces, it affects how they move and how their mentalities have formed. It was very important for me to share those spaces with Hélène so that this mentality that is informed by place could also be enhanced by camera.
Rehearsing with actors for the film Murina
7R: What did those rehearsals look like for the film Murina?
Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic: I would have a scene from the lives of these characters, not necessarily one from the script, and I would let them improvise. I would watch them within the space of the actual location, and how they move as those characters through that space. It became very clear how the father would use the terrace, how Nela would use the bedroom, and how Julija would use her own room. Of course, after those intense rehearsals, I would also change things in the script because I would understand the spaces even better. It informed the movement of the camera and all the other departments.
I rehearsed with the actors before [going on location], doing different types of preparations for each role. Some required deep diving, some required dancing and singing and hunting. We had all these technical rehearsals, and then we had rehearsals for some time living together as a family in the house. That was prior to [being on] location. It was in another place.
Location scouting
7R: How did you find the locations for the film Murina? It sounds like it was very important to make sure you had the right house.
Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic: Yes, I was looking for a location that felt intact, that felt inherited in the family for many years. It was eroding a little bit, but also something monumental. I wanted a house that had no vegetation around, except olives that are kind of grey and stone-like. I didn’t want to have any lush greens that give shade and [provide] places of rest and comfort. All the locations should feel very raw and stark. They feel beautiful at first, but if you’ve spent a lot of time in them, they’re exhausting. It’s like burning raw flesh on a plate.
The blue [of the water] would be a juxtaposition to that [harshness of the landscape]: something very hidden, moist, comfortable, and dark. [We shot at] Kornati, a national park I knew of, which has all these rocks. I knew it because I used to go there over the years. The house I found because I was going to make a documentary about a man who lives there.
Developing the colour scheme for the film Murina
7R: How did you think about the colours within Murina? I feel like the blue of the sea is something that immediately comes to mind when I think of the film.
Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic: Yes, I wanted the film to have as little colour as possible. The blue had to be the main colour, and the rest was grey — except the costumes. Of course, there are certain colour accents, especially Javier’s party, that feels like the world entering their isolation. There’s some red on the mother that feels like passion but faded — old and dusty. But the rest is grey. The white of the stone could transmit the heat in the best way that I wanted. And then blue, it feels like a mirror above the surface. Once you go in the water, it’s cooling and it’s dark. It’s a place of solace for Julija.
Download a FREE excerpt from the ebook Fiction directors: In their own words
Discover how the best fiction directors working today —from the famous to the quietly fantastic — approach making movies. An essential resource for filmmakers, and a great introduction to filmmaking for every cinephile.
Lighting the film Murina
7R: The light becomes very important then, because of that heat.
Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic: Light is so important. Always, in every movie, life comes through light.
7R: A lot of the film Murina is outside, so how do you create the light that you want?
Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic: It was very challenging for Hélène. We had to plan everything by the time of the day as we worked only with natural light in the entire film. We knew exactly which side of the house we would shoot in the morning, which one in the afternoon. Tracking the reality of time within the movie, through the light, was another challenge. It’s not only that it looks good, but it also feels real to the story.
Designing the costumes
7R: How did you approach the costume design for the film Murina?
Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic: Costume designer Amela Baksic was also a very, very important collaborator for me. We were building Julija’s costume for almost a year. There were five or six fittings between LA and Dubrovnik, because [Gracija] was changing and developing between sixteen and seventeen. We wanted to make sure that she had a real costume, that feels like armour: a bathing suit [that isn’t] too open, and not in any way sexualising her, but just making her strong. [The bathing suit] gives her new power, and [marks her as] a person of the sea, almost like an eel.
I wanted to have a sense of different timelines in their lives: the better times in the past, the times now, and how the rest of the world developed forward. But maybe this family’s a little stuck in some nostalgia. That was very important in building the family through costume. I also wanted it to [evoke] this transitional stage of the country going from maybe communism to capitalism. This foreign wealth comes in that needs its own colour palette.
On Javier and the influence of foreign wealth in the film
7R: How did you think about showing that influence of foreign wealth in the film Murina?
Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic: In Croatia, there’s a lot of interest in foreign investments. People are coming from all over the world to buy properties, for less money, that have been in the possession of families for centuries. New generations are very eager to sell. It’s fast money leisure, and they’re not thinking of the [future]. If there were not a few individuals really caring for their properties, everything would get sold really fast: all these important sixteenth- or seventeenth-century summer houses. It’s something that I’ve noticed that kind of bothered me about that mentality: the need for easy money. Capitalising on the past and on the work of others without new creation.
7R: Can you tell me how you thought about Javier? He’s the big disruptor that gets the plot moving, and he serves as a foil to Ante.
Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic: I think, as teenagers, we have this assumed behaviour of our parents. We know how they’re going to act, as we grew up with them. Javier is this new man who comes and brings in the world, who over-promises and under-delivers. He’s someone she’s so easily fascinated by. She’s completely charmed by both his persona and his admiration for her mother, because this is the dynamic she’s watching.
Download a FREE excerpt from the ebook Fiction directors: In their own words
Discover how the best fiction directors working today —from the famous to the quietly fantastic — approach making movies. An essential resource for filmmakers, and a great introduction to filmmaking for every cinephile.
Working with Gracia Filipovic
7R: I’m wondering if you can talk a bit about Gracija. What made you want to write a film, and Murina, for her? What was it like working with her?
Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic: She’s very disciplined, as an actress, as a person. She’s trained as a swimmer for over ten years. She has this real work ethic that I believe comes from sports. It was very important for me to bring somebody that I knew I could work with for forty-two shooting days. She also had her own relationship with the water [which was wonderful]. She has this very fascinating, classical face that needs very little to show emotions.
For me, it was about how to restrain what she feels inside instead of bringing it out front. The very first time I pointed camera at her in the short film, I was fascinated by how we empathise and feel with her expressions. It’s very easy to connect with her as a protagonist.
7R: What kind of direction do you give her? What kind of preparation did you do together?
Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic: I cast the entire ensemble of actors by rehearsing with her and then matching the actors that could support her role in the best way. Then, I also did different rehearsals with her. We probably prepared together for two years: teaching her to dance the tango, [going] hunting and diving. She lived with me on the island. She wrote a diary that I would read, and we would comment on the life of Julija. The tango was something very interesting for me, because in the tango, you are really giving the benefit of the doubt to another person, to lead and inform you.
Developing the relationships between the characters
7R: A lot of the film is about Julija watching her mother with these two men. How did you think to show those relationships that she would observe?
Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic: It was very important that she’s an active participant. She is taking in emotional information from the world, but then pushing things forward more, taking action.
7R: How did you think about working with the other actors in Murina to create those relationships?
Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic: I made all the actors have rehearsals with Gracija one on one first, before putting them all together. We had a couple of rehearsals during the year with Leon [Luchev] and Gracija, and then she also spent two weeks with Danica [Curcic].
With Javier [played by actor Cliff Curtis], they had conversations through Zoom, building a relationship even before he arrived in Croatia. It was about anchoring certain things that are familiar to her into these people, that she could relate to and then manifest it.
Giving Julija agency
7R: It’s interesting that you talk about how you want her to always have agency, because it feels like the world is kind of closing in on her. She has very few options. Yet we always feel like she’s going to be okay.
Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic: She’s always taking action even when she is hitting against the wall. It was very important for me to have a protagonist that is fighting. That’s how the movie escalates. The walls are closing in, and she is taking action and fighting louder and stronger. It brings the movie from a low simmer to a boil.
Editing the film Murina
7R: I’m wondering a bit about the editing process on the film Murina. How did you find the rhythm for the film?
Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic: That’s always an interesting question. It’s always a challenge. I think that rhythm, for the film, was first informed by the script. There’s definitely rewrites on the page, and then on set, and then in the editing room, but the rhythm was already set in the script. And then, the actors [set the rhythm] because there’s a lot of long shots. You need to create the rhythm within a shot if you decide not to cut.
During editing, it was mostly deciding which rhythms to honour that were already set from the script and from the set. Certain things could last longer because you see them on a big screen; it works at a little bit slower pace. We had to readjust the rhythm. We were mostly slowing things down rather than speeding it up.
7R: In what other parts did you find you were slowing down?
Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic: All the parts where people are not speaking, when they’re just being. I felt that we could be there longer, and really settle into their thoughts — not only just for recognition and information but [for the] feel. I felt we could be with them. And I had a really great editor who was very passionate about the project, Vladimir Gojun. So that was a very pleasurable process.
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Developing the sound design
7R: What was the process for creating the sound design for the film?
Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic: Sound is very, very important for me. And that’s also something I think about a lot on the script level. It was something that I discovered on Into the Blue. I think that you could watch a film with a lesser picture but great sound, and it’s still going to be amazing. A great picture and bad sound just doesn’t work. Sound is unique because we don’t see it. We just experience it as reality. It comes from a different sensory experience than when we believe what we are seeing.
Knowing when the film is silent was incredibly important to me. Knowing when there’s a lack of sound and knowing when there is a sound. The film is really about noises in between the silences, when we go from above to under the water. Only through sound does this film get immersive. It’s already in our script phase that you feel this rhythm: you close your eyes, you can hear where the film is slowing down.
An American approach to European film
I co-wrote the script with Frank Graziano. He’s not from Croatia. He was my classmate from Columbia [University]. The mentality [of Croatia] was new to him. He spent some time in Croatia while we were writing it. It was great to have a different perspective of somebody American and someone who’s a different [gender] than me. It was like two parts of the brain merging.
7R: What did you get from that perspective?
Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic: I always wanted to make movies that look European, but also that have the structure and rhythm of American films. In Croatia, I got the note that the movie is too commercial. For me, that was a compliment. I wanted [Murina] to be understood by everyone.
That’s something I truly respect about North American films: they think of the clarity. Part of my education was [learning] to think of the audience. The audience is very important because they are the ones who need to be emotionally involved in your film. They are not you. You are already emotionally involved on that level from the script. You don’t need to shoot the film for yourself.
On finding the silences
7R: You mentioned that the film is really about the sounds in between silences. How did you think about what you wanted those sounds to be? What had you wanted to emphasise?
Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic: I wanted to emphasise Ante’s movement. I wanted you to know when he’s there even when you don’t see him. I wanted him to be omnipresent. That’s the most important thing. I wanted to definitely emphasise when he’s not there, too. When he’s not there, not only is there a lack of him, but the rest of the people are also quieter. There’s kind of a breath, the tension deflates, and [there is more freedom]. Also, [I wanted the audience] to contemplate what life without him would be like, which is important for Julija’s character.
On the film’s final sequence
7R: Tell me a bit about the cave sequence towards the end, where Julija finds an escape?
Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic: It was funny, because when we were writing that, Frank and I were like, this is totally crazy. She sees the moray eel that leads her out of the cave: it’s so crazy. But I felt like I could totally pull that off, to make it feel very real, totally planted in reality.
All of a sudden, it felt like it became another movie [because of this fanciful plot turn]. It felt like that to the rest of the team, who said we should cut it. But I was very confident that its synchronicity was already built in. It didn’t feel like such a surprise because it was built in throughout the film. It felt a part of the narrative, to me.
That was a great shoot day. That was the first thing I shot. Going down to the cave was, of course, the crescendo of the film that I shot on day one, because of the logistics of the shoot. It was very hard and very easy, in a way, because seeing that footage, I know where the movie needs to go. But also, if that footage was any less good, I wonder what it would do to the rest of the movie.
What’s next
7R: What are you working on next?
Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic: I have a couple of scripts. I just gave birth.
7R: Oh, congratulations!
Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic: Thank you. I gave birth. Two days after my premiere in Cannes.
7R: Oh my god.
Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic: Between the premiere and the closing ceremony when I won the Caméra d’Or. That was pretty crazy. I am now mostly reading work from other people. I’m going to go back to writing in a month. But there are projects that I’ve been developing for some years. And I feel that they’re coming to fruition, to be shared with the world. Two of them are set in New York. That’s what I’m hoping to showcase next.
Listen to the podcast season on Women at Cannes
Over the course of five episodes, we celebrate achievements of women directors at the Cannes Film Festival in Competition and beyond, both in 2022 and in the past — and take the festival to task for its history of sexist programming.
Want more insights into filmmaking like Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic’s?
Download a FREE excerpt from the ebook Fiction directors: In their own words
Discover how the best fiction directors working today —from the famous to the quietly fantastic — approach making movies. An essential resource for filmmakers, and a great introduction to filmmaking for every cinephile.
