“The Lion at My Back”, an interview with director Tonia Mishiali

Eight years after the premiere of Pause, her debut feature (after several internationally acclaimed shorts, followed by a few more after Pause), at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival (East of the West Competition), Tonia Mishiali was back at the Czech event with her second feature-length movie, The Lion at My Back, this time vying for the Crystal Globe, and was awarded the Grand Prize of the Ecumenical Jury.

We met the Cypriot director to discuss further this work, announced as the second instalment of a trilogy exploring the role of women in modern-day society, where the thoughtful mise en scène and the splendid, impactful cinematography actively accompany, in the many spaces where the action of this Cyprus-set story unfolds, the two female protagonists.

A forty something local with a past who is fighting for the custody of her daughter and a young migrant who finds herself outside the door of the home where she was living on her 18th birthday – compellingly embodied, with all their nuances and contradictions, by Elena Kallinikou and Sokhna Diallo – as they struggle to find their place, and gradually develop a moving bond which ends feeling like home.

A mother-daughter story rooted in personal experience

On the background of the story, Mishiali explains that the idea to pair an ode to the mother-daughter relationship with the depiction of the situation of a young immigrant came from her personal attachment to both themes (being a mother and “a refugee in [her] my own country”), and was further fuelled by her encounter with women, mostly African, seeking asylum in Cyprus.

We also talk about the way the film combines intimate close ups with an interesting treatment of space, or rather spaces (from safe to hostile, open to claustrophobic, inhumane to warm), including “the space that is contained within them”, which the director approached instinctively, with an awareness of her characters’ need to breathe, too.

Shooting on 16mm for a rawer, more organic feel

On the choice to shoot on 16mm: “I first met Manu Tilinski, my cinematographer, in Athens, because I wanted to work with a new cinematographer and so I met a few, and in my mind, even before I met him, was the sense that I had to do this film on 16 mm, and because there’s always budget restrictions and all that, I thought it was never going to happen, and I had no experience with film – I have only worked with digital –, so I thought if I am going to do that, I have to work with a cinematographer who has this experience.”

“And I didn’t say anything to him and as soon as we met, as he had read the script, he went, ‘You know we have to shoot on 16 mm, right?’ and I said, ‘Thank you!’ Because the idea is that the film is quite raw, and rough, so I think this roughness that comes from film, the grain, that feels more organic.”

Casting the two leads

Tonia Mishiali explains how she went about choosing her actresses, and how Sokhna Diallo joined the project as a professional actress when the first actor Mishiali had in mind, a Somalian non professional, had to suddenly leave Cyprus for safety reasons.

She also give us more details on how they found the right chemistry to give a sensitive depiction of the bond between Stella and Mariama, and evokes the male characters in the film.

“Maya”: the third chapter of the trilogy

On the third instalment of her trilogy, Maya, already in the works: “So the trilogy is really about women living on the sidelines and trying to find themselves and establish themselves in the world, and enjoy their rights and be prominent and be out there and be respectful – to themselves first, and towards each other – and get respect from others. So in general, it’s really about women rebelling […]. So I started with Stella in Pause, a 50-year-old woman who was oppressed and tried to find a way out… […]”

“And then the third one is called Maya and it’s about a 30-year-old woman, so I’m going down in age, and again it’s similar – she feels different, she’s trying to fit in, etc. –, but it’s actually a genre film, it’s a fantasy film. So I am using another genre but again, it’s character-based, so it’s really about her finding herself as she inherits a house in the countryside and leaves the city to go there, and enters a patriarchal world of hunters in the woods, killing lots of animals, and finds herself attracted to this world, and meets goblins in the forest.”

Plot