Cypriot director Tonia Mishiali talks about The Lion at My Back, now vying for the Crystal Globe at Karlovy Vary, her second feature after Pause, which also premiered at the festival but in the now-defunct East of the West strand.

Cineuropa: The film's context of migration is not necessarily about assimilation or escape, but about discovering one's place — for both Mariama and Stella. What was your thinking behind this topic?
Tonia Mishiali: It was a very challenging theme to handle, because there were a lot of films about migration when I started writing this, around 2017 or 2019. Back then, it was a bit of a hot topic, but then people started saying, "I don't want to watch a film about migration." Migration is an issue that exists, so why wouldn't you want to watch a film about it? I never intended to make a film just about migration, as you said – it's also about motherhood and the relationship between these two women. It just happens that one is an immigrant and the other an ex-drug addict, and their paths cross.

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One of my favourite moments is when Mariama and Stella each share what they like about the other. It's so vulnerable, and it says a lot about both of their personalities.
It's one of the scenes I'm very proud of. That scene was actually in the script from the first draft, and I think I shot draft number 20 or something. I don't remember exactly how it came to me, because I went through a lot with the script. I think it was a playful way to introduce Mariama's character early on, as she tries to bond with Stella, who was rather dismissive. When Mariama asks Stella something, she doesn't want to answer – she's pretending. It's as though the veil is lifted in that scene.

What about the casting? Even when the two of them are butting heads at the beginning, the chemistry is palpable.
I knew Elena, who plays Stella, from theatre and other films she'd been in. I knew she was a great actress, so I wanted to meet her and see if we matched, because I'm very instinctual. We went for coffee and drinks to see if we matched, in terms of respect and energy. It was clear she was the one. For Mariama, I had originally cast a non-actress from Somalia, months before the shoot, and we started rehearsing. But she disappeared a month and a half before the shoot. That's why I dedicated the film to her in the end, where it says, in the credits, "wherever you are" – because I don't know where she is. She's been moving between different countries since last year, because she had to flee Cyprus. It was a life-threatening situation. It reminded me why I wanted to make the film in the first place.

I was worried about her and I found out she was okay after a week. She called me. We kept in touch a little bit, as far as she could, and then I had to recast. I got some help from casting directors in Greece, France and Italy. I found Sokhna, who was 20 when I cast her; she didn’t have much experience, but she has worked on other films since. It was a risk to see if she would match with Stella, but she did, and I'm very happy about that.

On a different note, could you share a bit about how you discovered the locations? You have a variety of different settings that build a unique picture of the world only the two of them really understand.
Some locations were written into the script. From the beginning, I knew I was going to shoot in Larnaca, as that's how I'd imagined it. Even though I'm from Nicosia, and it would have been more expensive to shoot in Larnaca, we managed to make it work. The spaces mattered a great deal to me, because I needed the audience to catch their breath while also sinking them into the darkness of each character. I do stay close to the characters with the camera, and it's quite intense. Cyprus is known as this beautiful, touristic, exotic beach destination and all that, so I liked the contrast of placing these characters within these spaces, because that's our reality.

You have this mid-film scene in which Stella is drawn back into the world of underground sex parties to earn the money she needs. It's so different, tonally and stylistically, from the rest of the film. Could you talk about the aesthetics of this scene?
I wanted this scene to stand out — it was deliberate, for sure. I like that shock factor, in a way, because the film feels realistic at the beginning, and then you enter this very specific world. I do tend to include more surreal elements in my films. Visually, my cinematographer and I talked a lot about how to approach it. The lighting colour was something he suggested, and we worked from there. He suggested we shoot the club scene in magenta, and from there we thought about how to connect the two. For Stella, it's a surreal moment in her life, because she's only just got out of that world. I knew it was a risk, but if the audience is with this character, they would follow her naturally.