{"id":526855,"date":"2026-07-05T20:51:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-05T20:51:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/526855\/"},"modified":"2026-07-05T20:51:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-05T20:51:08","slug":"filmmaker-tonia-mishiali-talks-the-lion-at-my-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/526855\/","title":{"rendered":"Filmmaker Tonia Mishiali Talks ‘The Lion at My Back’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tCypriot filmmaker Tonia Mishiali<\/a> tackles immigration, the patriarchy and the strength of women in \u201cThe Lion at My Back,\u201d which is playing in the Crystal Globe competition at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe feature follows the bond that grows between Senegalese immigrant Mariama (Sokhna Diallo) and Stella (Elena Kallinikou), a woman who works at a Cyprus immigration center who is trying to rebuild her life.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cEach has their own issues, their struggles,\u201d the director says of her second feature. She wanted to build on what she had created in \u201cPause,\u201d her first feature. \u201cSo I thought, OK, two parallel story lines. I follow one, then when they meet, I transcend to the other one, and then every time they meet, I started to build their relationship more and more and more to come more organic in a way.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMariama, despite facing limited job prospects and racism, is happy, almost joyous about life, while Stella is bitter and cynical but clings to hope \u2014 and Mishiali subtly doles out the backstories of the characters, building fully rounded women that a patriarchal society has used and abused them (but she doesn\u2019t deal in polemics \u2014 she skillfully creates well-round portraits of male characters, too). But Mishiali refuses to have them give up, which tracks: she centers her films on social justice and women\u2019s issues.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut the film is also about motherhood, as Stella is fighting to regain custody of her young daughter, and begins to treat Mariama as a daughter, too. \u201cI wanted it to be a note to motherhood. I have a teenage daughter \u2014 well, when I started writing the film, she was a teenager. I wanted to write a film about the complex relationship between mothers and daughters, because I think it\u2019s very special, but it\u2019s very complex at the same time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tShe also wanted to write a film about refugees, having been one herself when she was a child during the 1970s after Turkey invaded Cyprus in 1974.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe were forced to flee our homes, I was just 1 year old, I don\u2019t remember much, but this was a trauma that my family carried all these years. We were thrown out of our homes, and we carried this \u2018refugee\u2019 feeling, and the bitterness. But then I met all these African women, these asylum seekers in Cyprus, and I couldn\u2019t believe how positive these people were,\u201d she says. \u201cThey were always looking at life positively, they were grateful for managing to be where they are. Everything that is a struggle they don\u2019t see it as a struggle. They\u2019re very resilient. So I wanted to kind of combine these two stories, and that\u2019s how I came up with the idea of Mariama and Stella.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tShe\u2019s had a passion to spotlight the stories of women who are sidelined by society, and framed her characters within a world in which they are not respected. \u201cI wanted to position these two characters within this culture \u2026 there\u2019s patriarchy still there and I see it every day, I witness it every day, and as also a female filmmaker, we have struggles, and also to be trusted and to be respected,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\n\tAsked about her cinematic influences, she singles out Chantal Akerman and her film \u201cJeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles.\u201d \u201cIn my opinion, it remains one of the most important feminist films ever made and it was one of the first films that inspired me to embrace a female perspective in my own filmmaking,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe film is produced by Bark Like a Cat Films (Cyprus), co-produced by Iris Prods. (Luxembourg) and Avalon Films (Greece). Yellow Affair is handling international sales.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cypriot filmmaker Tonia Mishiali tackles immigration, the patriarchy and the strength of women in \u201cThe Lion at My…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":526856,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[146,85,46,221595,240785],"class_list":["post-526855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-karlovy-vary-film-festival","tag-tonia-mishiali"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=526855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526855\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/526856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=526855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=526855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=526855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}