Slovenian filmmaker Sonja Prosenc is prepping her fourth operate, an untitled drama about “sisterhood and female liberation” that follows on the heels of her Tribeca premiere “Family Treatment,” a biting social satire-cum-family drama that has its European premiere in opponents this week on the Sarajevo Film Competitors.

She’s moreover co-developing the darkish comedy-horror assortment “Little Yugoslavia” with North Macedonian filmmaker Teona Strugar Mitevska (“God Exists, Her Establish is Petrunya”), which the duo might be pitching on the Bosnian fest.

Describing her subsequent operate as “a drama with thriller elements,” Prosenc talked about the film is structured like a puzzle, the place the narrative arranges every bit until it steadily constructs the worlds of three ladies. Set in Slovenia and Italy, it follows their separate lives as they switch in direction of an inevitable convergence, their interconnected tales slowly assembling and culminating in a dramatic collision.

Prosenc talked about the movie will “uncover themes of freedom, sisterhood and the unpredictable vitality of chance encounters” whereas being “set in direction of a backdrop of societal constraints.” It may possibly reunite the filmmaker with earlier collaborators along with “Family Treatment” cinematographer Mitja Ličen, who lensed Laura Samani’s Cannes Critics’ Week premiere “Small Physique.” Pic has Italian and Norwegian co-producers connected and is on the lookout for a French co-producer.

Marking the next step in her continued evolution as a filmmaker, Prosenc talked about the mission “artistically falls someplace between” the tragicomic “Family Treatment” and her first two films. Her debut, “The Tree,” premiered in Karlovy Fluctuate’s East of West opponents in 2014 and was chosen as Slovenia’s entry inside the Academy Award race for best worldwide operate film. Her sophomore effort, “Historic previous of Love,” bowed inside the Czech fest’s predominant opponents in 2018 and as soon as extra represented her nation for the Oscars.

“Family Treatment,” which premiered in Tribeca’s Worldwide Narrative Opponents this 12 months, follows a seemingly wonderful family whose life is thrown into disarray when a youthful stranger arrives, exposing their hidden fears, flaws and targets, and unraveling the deep-seated dysfunction of their relationships. The standout strong comprises Mila Bezjak, Aliocha Schneider, Marko Mandić and Katarina Stegnar.

The film is written and directed by Prosenc and produced by Prosenc and Rok Sečen for Ljubljana-based Monoo. It’s co-produced by Marta Zaccaron and Fabiana Balsamo for Incipit Film (Italy), Tamara Babun and Matija Drniković for Wolfgang&Dolly (Croatia), Jarle Bjørknes for Incitus Film (Norway) and Dimče Stojanovski for Dwelling Pictures (Serbia).

Speaking to Choice ahead of Sarajevo, Prosenc described “Family Treatment” as “an exploration of isolation,” situating the film’s protagonists — which she characterised as representatives of Slovenia’s “post-transitional nouveau riche” — in a story the place their “progressive, humanistic values” are put to the verify after they’re unexpectedly positioned to help one different family in need.

“I was questioning about this dissonance between our values and our actions, as soon as we’re confronted with one factor in precise life,” talked about the director. Of her predominant characters, she talked about: “I really feel they actually really feel absolutely disconnected from the rest of society. They often want to actually really feel disconnected. It’s a very updated state of society in Slovenia. And, in spite of everything, worldwide.”

Mandić performs Aleksander, an ersatz patriarch and struggling writer twenty years away from his last success, and married to Olivia (Stegnar), a gallerist whose private wants and ambitions are thwarted by her failing marriage. Cultured and cosmopolitan on the pores and skin, the couple rapidly turns into captive to its private prejudices and fears after an unwelcome knock on the door.

Whereas Prosenc outlined that it “would have been very easy to make this family a capitalist, conservative, rich family…afraid of what the ‘totally different’ represents,” she chosen as a substitute for set the Kraljs in a “further cultural milieu,” noting: “I didn’t merely want to stage my finger at anyone who has completely totally different values from me.

“I wanted to open up space for empathy from the viewer. Because of points is not going to be black and white,” she continued. “And I really feel this allowed me to open up a threat for the viewers to see themselves — secretly, inside the darkness of the cinema, the place they are going to preserve hidden from totally different people — that presumably they could do the similar.”

Prosenc will also be in Sarajevo alongside North Macedonian filmmaker Mitevska to pitch the darkish comedy-horror assortment “Little Yugoslavia,” which they’ll be presenting all through Sarajevo’s CineLink Enterprise Days, which runs Aug. 17 – 22.

“Little Yugoslavia” is prepared in an eerie, post-socialist condominium difficult the place residents vanish with out a touch, and two vampire queens — mother and daughter drug addicts every over the age of fifty — are on a mission to purify the world.

Mitevska, who conceived of the eight-episode current, instructed Choice that she’d grown increasingly more pissed off with TV assortment from the Balkan space and wanted “to create one factor that I’d watch, one factor edgy, funky, liberating and entertaining.” Prosenc added that she was drawn to the thought’s “punk-rock energy” and was quick to come back again on board.

“I truly felt like we should all the time do one factor collectively, to shake up the scene on this house of regional prime quality assortment,” she talked about. “We felt like there’s a scarcity of assortment that consider female protagonists — ladies like her and me who’re flawed, ladies who is not going to be wonderful and who dare to be like this.”

The gathering might be produced by Labina Mitevska by means of her manufacturing agency Sisters and Brothers Mitevski, in co-production with Prosenc by means of her Slovenian outfit Monoo. Teona Mitevska and Prosenc have spent the earlier 12 months rising the current by means of the French CNC’s Going European fund, a training program designed for authors involved in co-writing worldwide assortment, and are looking out for broadcasters and pre-sales all through CineLink Enterprise Days.

Teona Mitevska’s last film, “21 Days Until the End of the World,” premiered inside the Venice Film Competitors’s Venice Days sidebar last 12 months. Her earlier operate, “The Happiest Man inside the World,” bowed inside the competitors’s Horizons strand in 2022.

As Choice beforehand launched, the prolific filmmaker is at current engaged on her English-language debut, “Mother,” which stars Noomi Rapace as a result of the legendary Catholic saint Mother Theresa. The film will observe seven days at a pivotal second in her life, when she decides to depart the Loreto Entally convent in Calcutta and launch her private order. “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” and “Prometheus” star Rapace is serving on the operate film jury this week in Sarajevo.

The Sarajevo Film Competitors runs Aug. 16 – 23.