Slovenian director Kukla, whose debut feature Fantasy world premiered at the 78th edition of the Locarno Film Festival in the Filmmakers of the Present lineup on Friday, is working on a new project that promises to bring her unique voice to a story about sex, war, TikTok, and the relationship between women and men.
“My next film is about a potential threat of a third World War,” the writer and director tells THR. “Of course, 99 percent of the world leaders are male, and then a TikToker, as a joke, says that we should just stop giving birth to their children, and we should stop having sex. And then, women all around the world stop having sex with men, and the shit hits the fan.”
A title or other details of the new project aren’t known yet. But Kukla shares: “It’s going to be quite different from Fantasy.”
In Fantasy, a coming-of-age story full of laughs, drama, and twists that centers on three girls who are outsiders and whose lives get turned upside down when they meet a trans woman called Fantasy. The filmmaker has described the movie as a way of “inviting women to see themselves through their own lens rather than through external expectations.”
Totem Films is handling international sales on the movie, which is a co-production between Slovenia and North Macedonia.
Kukla, who is also a musician, developed a reputation for directing music videos before making her 2020 short film Sisters, which won the Grand Prix International honor at the Clermont-Ferrand Film Festival and the Audience Award at Premiers Plans d’Angers. She then transformed the short into the feature film Fantasy.
“The process was so difficult that I was like, ‘I’m never going to do another film anymore,’” Kukla shares with THR. And after giving birth, she thought she would need a break. But her creative energy is driving her to work on the new project. Says the filmmaker: “I had this idea for my next film five years ago, and I’m already writing it.”