
Dita (Anamaria Marinca, from 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days) never wanted to be a mother, but circumstances compel her to raise her girlfriend’s two daughters, tiny troublemaker Mia and rebellious teen Vanesa. A battle of wills ensues as the three continue to butt heads in the midst of an extended makeshift family — a recipe for chaos, laughter and heartache, all jumbled up together.
Hot from its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival earlier this month, this rambunctious Eastern European comic drama is the third feature in just two years from Macedonian-born, Australian-educated writer-director Goran Stolevski, a rising star on the international film scene. The vibe here is “verité”: real locations; handheld camera; improvised, overlapping dialogue; life in flux. As Stolevski explains: “The purpose was always for the viewer to experience the story as the characters experiencing it. For the viewer to viscerally feel the panic and intensity of their plight, to get a sense of what life is like in their skin and to ultimately take part in their emotional journey.”
A fizzy, huggable portrait of a self-made, roughly blended queer family.
Hollywood Reporter
Anamaria Marinca, Alina Serban, Samson Selim, Mia Mustafi, Vladimir Tintor
Macedonia/Poland/Croatia/
Serbia/Kosovo
2023
Panorama
In Macedonian, Romani, Albanian with English subtitles
Sexual Discrimination
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits
Screenwriter
Goran Stolevski
Cinematography
Naum Doksevski
Editor
Goran Stolevski
Production Design
Anna Rzezniczek
Original Music
Alen Sinkauz, Nenad Sinkauz
Director

Goran Stolevski
Goran was born and grew up in Macedonia before migrating to Australia in his teens. His debut feature, You Won’t Be Alone, premiered in official competition at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival, while his second, Of an Age, opened the 2022 Melbourne International Film Festival before winning the $100,000 CinefestOz prize for Best Australian Film. Both films were distributed internationally by Focus Features and Universal. Before shifting to features, Goran had made twenty-five shorts, playing over 200 festivals worldwide, with Would You Look at Her winning the jury prize for Best International Short at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival and being selected for the Criterion Channel. Goran completed a Bachelor in Creative Arts at the University of Melbourne and a Masters in Film and Television at the Victorian College of the Arts.
Filmography: You Won’t Be Alone (2022); Of an Age (2022)
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
The Graduate
In The Graduate Benjamin (Dustin Hoffman, 30 playing 20 with masterly understatement) comes home from college and is surprised to be seduced by the wife of his father's business partner, Mrs Robinson (Anne Bancroft).
blur: To the End
Now in their late 50s, Britpopsters blur (of Song 2 fame) do a celebratory lap of Great Britain culminating in their first ever Wembley Stadium show in this appealing observational doc. A companion piece to the concert film Live at Wembley Stadium.
Midnight Cowboy
Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman are street hustlers on different ends of the innocence / experience spectrum who establish something more than a business partnership in the seedy world of late 60s New York City in John Schlesinger's New Hollywood classic.
Sinners
This year's unexpected box office sleeper is that rare beast, a genre movie full of bold invention and surprise. We are in Mississippi in the early 1930s, and the opening of a new blues joint on the edge of town is the signal for all hell to break out.
The Headless Woman
The pictures tell the story -- and you better not blink -- when Veronica (the superb Maria Onetto) hits something on the road home. But what? She is too traumatized, or panic-stricken, to go back and look, and her fears are too terrible to acknowledge.