Known for his profound documentaries such as Europolis, The Town of the Delta (2009), on the decay of the town of Sulina on the Danube Delta, but also for the historic drama Warming Up Yesterday’s Lunch (2002), tackling Macedonia’s tragic fate, and the melancholic Black Sea-set tragicomedy The Sinking of Sozopol (2014), Kostadin Bonev is once again diving into a little-known story from the Balkans, this time exploring the Albanian tradition of sworn virgins through She Who Remains, an adaptation of René Karabash’s Booker-nominated novel of the same title. On the occasion of the world premiere of the film at the Golden Rose Bulgarian Feature Film Festival, we asked the director about what inspired him to explore this subject, and about his collaboration with Karabash on the script.

(L'article continue plus bas - Inf. publicitaire)

Cineuropa: What drew you to this story built around women in which men are not necessarily portrayed in a positive light?
Kostadin Bonev: I don’t think cinema should be viewed through gender. What attracted me is a universal story. The novel combines something almost like an ancient tragedy with poetry, and it also deals with a theme that has fascinated me for a long time: wanting to shed one’s identity to become somebody else.

I find powerful the transformation of a young woman who changes her identity to survive and is forced to live in someone else’s skin. But I see another universal theme in the film: how people who love one another can end up hurting each other. She is responsible for her brother’s escape from Albania and her father’s death, while the father is responsible for her condition. Everything is interconnected. Perhaps this is one of the problems of modern people: why do we hurt those we love?

The film is also rooted in the tradition of Albanian sworn virgins. How did you approach this cultural context?
We were very careful not to make an overly specific ethnographic description of this custom. Our young protagonist is pushed into a corner and has to find a way out; she is fighting for her life. Her decision to become a man is spontaneous – it doesn’t come from some deep inner desire. The impulse comes from the outside, and this is how she becomes condemned to live in someone else’s skin for the rest of her life. For me, that is the tragedy.

These are tribal customs, pre-civilisational practices that have existed in many places where the state is absent and the laws of the tribe prevail. In Albania, the tradition of sworn virgins is associated with the Kanun of Lekë Dukagjini. During our research and during filming, we even encountered a real sworn virgin. She lives in the village where we shot. She was doing male jobs and worked hard, while the men drank coffee and rakia. The moment the law recognises her new identity, nobody has the right to question it.

One of the major challenges must have been creating dialogue, as the novel contains virtually none.
We first developed a narrative backbone and then worked with René Karabash as a co-scriptwriter. I was looking for concrete details that did not necessarily need to exist in the novel – what certain characters do, how they live, all those additional elements. René and I discussed everything and kept only what we both agreed on.

René deserves the main credit. I would say around 70% of the screenplay is hers. I intervened primarily as a director, looking for visual solutions and episodes that could clarify certain situations on screen.

How did you approach casting?
My Albanian co-producers organised several rounds of casting. We were very lucky: the actors were of an exceptionally high level, with perfect diction and a strong emotional connection to the story. They also became proof of how convincing René’s characters are. She had never been to Albania, yet the actors completely believed in her story.

We communicated in English, and we had an Albanian assistant on set who checked every line. But the actors also had freedom to improvise. In the most emotional scenes, Altea Lazaj sometimes changed or added lines. I only discovered some of these changes in editing, when a translator told me what she had actually said, but every change was beneficial to the film.

You describe She Who Remains as a modern fairy tale. Why?
It deals with a character who feels alone and lost in society. The protagonist is part of a long tradition of characters who try to escape their identity. I’m think of Max Frisch’s I’m not Stiller, which begins with “I’m not Stiller”. The whole novel is about a man trying to prove that he has another identity.

Our heroine has the same desire, but wherever you go, you cannot escape your past. You can change your name, your appearance or your identity, but you still carry your memories. That is ultimately what the film is about.