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Inside ‘Fantasy’: Kukla’s Fierce, Lilac-Toned Journey Into Girlhood and Identity

05/12/2025

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05/12/2025

Let it Rip Pictures' Kukla spotlights the slow burn of self-discovery with debut feature 'Fantasy'

Kukla’s debut feature 'Fantasy' premiere at the 78th Locarno Film Festival marked the beginning of a global run that has carried it from Sarajevo to São Paulo, through Vancouver, Thessaloniki, Belgrade, Portorož and further beyond. Everywhere it lands, the response is the same. Audiences do not simply watch 'Fantasy'; they absorb it. The film lingers like a bruise or a memory. It stains softly, like lilac on concrete.

Set in Slovenia, the story centres on Mihrije, Sina and Jasna, three tomboy friends growing feral inside a conservative world that values neatness over truth. Their friendship vibrates with defiance, a kind of raw electricity, and when Fantasyenters their lives something shifts. Possibility widens. Desire sparks. They begin to unlearn who they were told to be and invent who they might become. What unfolds is a dreamlike, tender and at times brutal meditation on girlhood, agency and the slow burn of self-discovery.

Kukla builds cinema through collision. Brutalist Balkan towers dissolve into pastel dreamscapes. Raw, untrained performances sit beside surreal, symbolic imagery. It is a film of friction, grey against lilac, realism against myth, childhood against the threshold of womanhood. Years of workshops and shared labour forged a sisterhood within the cast, and that bond pulses visibly through the screen. The result is something intimate yet mythic, deeply regional yet disarmingly universal.

The industry has taken notice. 'Fantasy' received the Heart of Sarajevo Best Actress Award presented collectively to the ensemble and multiple Vesna Awards for music, production design, costume, makeup and special achievement. Thessaloniki’s Mermaid Award jury honoured the film with a Special Mention. Yet perhaps what matters most are the personal messages that arrive after screenings. Young people who recognise themselves in these girls, who recall their own rebellions, who carry the film like memory long after the credits fade.

And all of it began with a single image. Tomboys in grey sweats, low ponytails, motorbikes. Unpolished. Unbothered. Uncontained. The image lived in Kukla for nearly a decade before expanding into the film it has now become. Workshops turned into scripts, scripts into residencies and those residencies into casting calls across streets, Instagram feeds, open rooms and chance encounters. The script acted as a backbone rather than a cage. The film was built through collaboration, trust and lived experience.

A Conversation with Kukla

Q> How did the process of developing the story and script begin?

Kukla> The idea came about 10 years ago while I was directing a music video. The protagonists were tomboy girls in grey sweats riding motorbikes, and they stayed in my mind. They were outsiders to the rigid rules of womanhood in the Balkans, which triggered memories, research and stories ranging from sworn virgins to turbo-folk culture. Over time I realised I was also tracing my own experience of growing up here. I first explored this world in the short film Sisters, but it grew beyond that. The script was a backbone, but the girls needed freedom. Real voices shaping a real world.

Q> Where do you draw inspiration from when building a world like 'Fantasy'?

Kukla> From real life, with all its tension, violence, contradictions and beauty. And from dreams, myth and the subconscious. I like the point where reality touches the mythic, because that is where something new can be born.

Q> The visual identity of 'Fantasy' is striking. How did you shape that tone and world?

Kukla> The central visual journey was a movement from grey to lilac, from brutalist Yugoslav blocks to something softer and more interior. My cinematographer and I tested images for years, constantly scouting, collecting textures, playing with metaphor, movement and perspective. I wanted the film to sit somewhere between the immediacy of music video language and the patience of cinematic narrative. Bold, but never empty of story.

Q> How did it feel to premiere at Locarno and witness such a strong response?

Kukla> It was overwhelming. You dream the film, fight for it, birth it and then it begins to live without you. The awards are wonderful of course, but it is the personal reactions that stay with me. When someone sees themselves in it, when they tell me they felt recognised, that is everything.

Q> The performances are incredibly grounded. What was your casting process like?

Kukla> Long, patient, intuitive. I cast through agencies, Instagram, street encounters. We watched films, talked, rehearsed and built trust. Many were first-timers, so we brought in intimacy coordinators and fight choreographers to create safety. Over time we became a family. That bond ultimately became larger than the film itself.

Q> Now that 'Fantasy' has found its audience, what comes next?

Kukla> After finishing it I swore never again because I was exhausted. And now I am writing the next one. It is related in theme, but different in tone. I carry everything I learned with me.

“It is inspiring to watch Kukla carve out space with such a bold, fearless first feature.” — Tomek Kulesza, EP at Let it Rip Pictures, representing Kukla in commercial work.