Her brilliant first film won a top prize at Cannes – the day after she gave birth. The Croatian filmmaker talks about being a child refugee – and why she wants to do a superhero movie
Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović was nine months pregnant when she walked on stage at Cannes last July for the premiere of her movie Murina. The Croatian director had flown to Europe a couple of months earlier from New York, where she lives, after doctors had told her that May was her cut-off point for plane travel. The plan was to have her baby in the south of France: everything was organised. But after a couple of days in Cannes – “I partied, I danced, I went to the beach, I swam, dined, met great people” – Kusijanović felt a need to give birth in her own country. “It was a strange emotional push. Like, OK, it’s time to go.”
Knowing that she could go into labour at any moment, she drove 13 hours from Cannes to Croatia with her husband and straight to hospital, where she gave birth to her son. Twelve hours later there was a call from the festival – she had won the Camera d’Or prize, for best first feature, would she like to go to the ceremony? “I mean, of course I couldn’t go back to Cannes, no!” Kusijanović says, laughing.
