The new short film directed by Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović was debuted as part of Miu Miu’s Women’s Tales.
Miu Miu continues its ongoing short film anthology series, Women’s Tales with the debut of its 26th film, Stane. The film premiered on September 3rd as part of the 80th Venice Film Festival Giornate degli Autori program, followed by discussion of arts and media with Miu Miu collaborators.
The film series has celebrated and amplified the voices of female directors since 2011 and remains one of the only commissioning platforms exclusively for female filmmakers. They just revealed the Miu Miu Women’s Tales Committee, a group of women leading the film-thought world who will shape the future of Women’s Tales. The Committee’s members include award-winning filmmaker and director of Women’s Tales #5, Ava Duvernay, renowned Maggie Gyllenhaal; Academy Award winning costume- production and set-designer Catherine Martin, and co-founding Committee members Miuccia Prada and Verde Visconti.
Stane, the newest addition to the series was directed by the Cannes Camera d’Or prize winning, Croatian filmmaker Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović, follows main character Stane, the daughter of a Croatian immigrant. Amidst the New York City skyline, Stane is meant to inherit her father’s construction business, but simultaneously her marriage is under strain. The film focuses on the patriarchal expectations made upon wives, versus Stane’s own pain and anger as she tries to build her own life story outside of the permission of men. It is a tale of the sacrifices of women to uphold the fabric of society, the generational friction between immigrant families, and the unequal ruling of honor and dishonor placed on the genders.
“What does it mean to give women power and put women in power’?”
“What does it mean to ‘give women power’ and ‘put women in power’?” asks Kusijanovic. “I constantly hear it and I’m conflicted about that expression — power that is ‘given’ then also can be ‘taken’ away.” Stane, along with her other films, contemplate her belief and focus on the plight of women, but she explains she never starts with the goal of politics or a social message. “I always start from character,” says Kusijanovic. From there the “issues of the world naturally emerge.”
Along with Kusijanovic, the Women’s Tales Committee, and other guest speakers from the industry, the event had a star-studded attendance with guests like Sydney Sweeney, Wes Anderson, Sadie Sink, Lili Reinhart, and more.
The film is now available on Miu Miu digital channels and to stream globally on MUBI.
All imagery courtesy of Prada.
