{"id":597210,"date":"2026-08-18T16:42:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T16:42:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/597210\/"},"modified":"2026-08-18T16:42:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T16:42:11","slug":"teona-mitevska-preps-sequel-to-god-exists-her-name-is-petrunya","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/597210\/","title":{"rendered":"Teona Mitevska Preps Sequel to ‘God Exists, Her Name is Petrunya’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tNorth Macedonian filmmaker Teona Mitevska (\u201cMother\u201d) is prepping a sequel to her satirical drama \u201cGod Exists, Her Name is Petrunya,\u201d which premiered in competition at the Berlinale in 2019, the director revealed at the Sarajevo Film Festival<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tWritten by Mitevska and Elma Tataragi\u0107, \u201cPetra Doesn\u2019t Want to Die (Anatomy of Masculinity)\u201d is the story of a rebellious teenage feminist from Belgium who, despite being diagnosed with anorexia, bipolar disorder, OCD and trichotillomania, remains strong, determined and lucid in her conviction to do what she believes she must: leave this world.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat impulse takes her to North Macedonia, a country that seems to the Belgian teen to be stuck in time, if not at the ends of the Earth. There she meets Nenad, a millennial incel living in the provincial town of Makedonska Kamenica, who forges an unlikely pact with Petra, offering to help her take her own life.<\/p>\n

\n\tDrawing a connection with the earlier dramedy \u201cGod Exists,\u201d Mitevska described \u201cPetra Doesn\u2019t Want to Die\u201d as \u201ca continuation, a reinterpretation, or a counterpoint to\u201d its predecessor, which won the Ecumenical Jury prize after its premiere in Berlin.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cGod Exists\u201d followed frustrated thirtysomething Petrunya (Zorica Nusheva), a determined yet endlessly put-upon woman still living with her parents in the dead-end Macedonian town of \u0160tip. After throwing herself into an annual Orthodox ceremony traditionally reserved for men, she provoked a fiercely misogynistic backlash from the community. But Petrunya unapologetically stood her ground, setting her apart from \u2014\u00a0\u00a0and at odds with \u2014 \u201ca patriarchal Macedonia in the grips of bullying machismo and hidebound religion,\u201d as\u00a0Variety\u2019s Jay Weissberg wrote in his review.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cTen years after \u2018God Exists, Her Name is Petrunya,\u2019 here we are: Macedonia, 2026,\u201d Mitevska told Variety in Sarajevo. \u201cA single question stays imprinted in my head: Where are the Petrunyas of today?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tA sympathetic portrait of generation alpha, or what she dubbed \u201cthe anxious generation,\u201d \u201cPetra Doesn\u2019t Want to Die\u201d is \u201ca response to and a testament to the power of new generations and their refusal to accept hypocrisy and involuntary\/voluntary submission as the only remaining option.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIn a world where young lives are like apples falling from trees, with alarming suicide rates rising daily,\u201d said the director, \u201cwhere future job prospects are not what they were, and the influence of the algorithm and social media paralyzes the agency of the individual and renders it to voluntary submission, the haunting question is: What is left for Petra [and her generation] to do?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMitevska said \u201cPetra Doesn\u2019t Want to Die\u201d was inspired in part by a Q&A session during the promotional run of \u201cGod Exists,\u201d when an audience member in a small German town asked, \u201cWhy are these men so angry?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe question sparked a curiosity about the manosphere and its many offshoots and subcultures: the men\u2019s rights movement, androphilia, paleo masculinity and other adherents of a \u201cred pill philosophy\u201d that \u201cconcentrates on restoring man\u2019s natural capacity,\u201d Mitevska said. That, in turn, led her to the character of Nenad, a proud Macedonian man and member of the Legion of Truth, a distinctly Balkan interpretation of the American MAGA movement.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIn his attempt to reassert himself, to affirm his masculinity, he is ready to do anything,\u201d said the director. By contrast, Petra is a willful woman marked by \u201cher strength and defiance.\u201d The film explores what happens when those two worlds collide, telling the story of \u201ctwo people who are complete opposites and who, in exceptional circumstances, in the very heart of chaos, find common ground,\u201d Mitevska said, adding: \u201cThrough the study of masculinity, I also examine femininity, and vice versa.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tMitevska is kicking off a busy week at the Sarajevo Film Festival. Unspooling in the festival\u2019s main competition is \u201cSkateboarding Is Not for Girls,\u201d from North Macedonian debutante Dina Duma, which premiered at Tribeca and is produced by Sisters and Brother Mitevski, the production company co-founded by Teona and her siblings Labina and Vuk.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tMeanwhile, in the CineLink industry section\u2019s drama strand, Mitevska and Slovenian filmmaker Sonja Prosenc are pitching \u201cLittle Yugoslavia<\/a>,\u201d a dark comedy-horror series\u00a0set in a post-socialist apartment complex where residents vanish without a trace, and two vampire queens are on a mission to purify the world.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs\u00a0Variety\u00a0exclusively revealed<\/a>, Mitevska is also partnering with French filmmaker C\u00e9line Sciamma (\u201cPortrait of a Lady on Fire\u201d) and others at the Balkan fest to launch Sister Sister, an initiative\u00a0that looks to reshape the role of women in the film and TV industries and create an inclusive and sustainable screen sector.<\/p>\n

\n\tMitevska\u2019s last film, \u201cMother,\u201d which starred Noomi Rapace<\/a> as a young Mother Teresa, opened the Horizons strand of the Venice Film Festival last year.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Sarajevo Film Festival runs Aug. 14 \u2013 21.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"North Macedonian filmmaker Teona Mitevska (\u201cMother\u201d) is prepping a sequel to her satirical drama \u201cGod Exists, Her Name…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":597211,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[93,61,60,270,250717,253093],"class_list":["post-597210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-movies","tag-sarajevo-film-festival","tag-teona-strugar-mitevska"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=597210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597210\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/597211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=597210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=597210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=597210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}