Cannes Winner Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović on Her Coming of Age as Filmmaker, Feminist and Mother After ‘Murina’

variety.com:

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentA testament to her fearless nature and boundless determination, Croatian-American filmmaker Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović was nine months pregnant when she traveled from New York to present her feature debut “Murina” at the Cannes Film Festival.At the end of the festival, Kusijanović tool a 12-hour road trip with her husband to her homeland in Croatia, where she gave birth to her first child Petrus, right before scooping Cannes’ Golden Camera award with “Murina,” a double feast which earned her newborn son a lifetime festival accreditation.Eight months later, she sat with Variety to tell us how her life has changed since winning the coveted award and looked back at her journey getting there.

Vibrant, bright, restless and forceful like her first feature “Murina,” Kusijanović hasn’t wasted any time. She’s already well advanced on her sophomore outing, a daring English-language film which she co-wrote with Yinuo Wang (“90 Days”) and will shoot in Mexico.

As with “Murina,” one of the overriding themes of her next project will be motherhood. Recently acquired by Kino Lorber, “Murina” will bow on the opening night of the First Look Festival at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York on Wednesday.

A tense and sensual coming-of-age tale, the movie follows Julija (Gracija Filipovic), whose urge to break free from her oppressive father and isolated existence in coastal Croatia is triggered by the visit of a family friend.