Interview

Found Family: Goran Stolevski on mothering his Queer Lion-winning dramedy Housekeeping for Beginners

John Forde
Džada Selim and Anamaria Marinca star in Housekeeping for Beginners.
Džada Selim and Anamaria Marinca star in Housekeeping for Beginners.

With Housekeeping for Beginners releasing in select US cinemas, writer-director Goran Stolevski chats with John Forde about representing the reality of Macedonian and Romani queer families, unconventional mothering and his love of Robert Altman.

I love that in movies, the key moment can come at the end of the scene and retroactively imbue everything before with meaning. Poetry works in the same way… I chase that feeling in all my movies.

—⁠Goran Stolevski
Housekeeping for Beginners

Housekeeping for Beginners 2023

Directed by Goran Stolevski

In the space of just three years, Housekeeping for Beginners’s Goran Stolevski has become one of the most exciting writer-directors in independent film. Born in Macedonia and raised in suburban Australia, Stolevski creates work that crosses geographical and cultural borders, with the restless, inquisitive energy of a permanent exile. 

You Won't Be Alone

You Won't Be Alone 2022

Directed by Goran Stolevski

Of an Age

Of an Age 2022

Directed by Goran Stolevski

In 2022, he dazzled Sundance with his debut feature highest rated Oceanian film of 2023.

With a creative output rivaling his filmmaking hero Robert Altman, Stolevski is back again with Housekeeping for Beginners, a wrenching, raucously funny drama about a makeshift LGBTQ family in modern-day Macedonia. The film reunites the director with Marinca, who plays Dita, a discreetly closeted social worker sharing her home with her Romani partner Suada (Alina Șerban), gay best friend Toni (Vladimir Tintor) and a posse of queer teens who’ve been rejected by their own families. After Suada is diagnosed with terminal cancer, Dita marries Toni so that she can keep custody of Suada’s daughters: surly teen Vanesa (Mia Mustafa) and ball-of-fire moppet Mia (Džada Selim).

Stolevski and his cinematographer Naum Doksevski drop us into the action with minimal setup, trusting us to work out who is who in Dita’s noisy, overcrowded household. Working in Academy ratio with a roving handheld camera, the atmosphere has the spontaneity of a documentary, with overlapping dialogue and bodies spilling in and out of the frame. Acting as his own editor, Stolevski employs swift cuts to keep the story on its toes, letting fight scenes play out in real time for powerful dramatic effect.

As with You Won’t Be Alone, the filmmaker elicits fantastic performances from his largely female cast, allowing the characters’ prickly personalities and volatile chemistry to lead each scene. Marinca’s quiet, chilly charisma is beautifully (mis)matched with Șerban, who plays Suada as a volcano of simmering rage. The stealth star, however, is Samson Selim as Ali, a Grindr hookup of Toni’s who sticks around, absorbing himself into the family. (Stolevski himself has a cheeky cameo that’s too delicious to be revealed here).

Letterboxd have taken a shine to Housekeeping, which currently holds a pristine 3.6-out-of-five-star rating. Calvin writes, “Stolevski’s makeshift family dynamic is a uniquely vivid, infectious joy to behold”, while Gabe calls it “messy and beautiful in all the right ways.” Srasab28 praises Stolevski for “[giving] so many marginalized communities a voice” with his “extremely tender, raw and beautiful” film, while Polowatched declares, “What a heart on this film. What a talent, to be able to capture heart-breaking struggle at different intersections and still give some levity.”

Premiering to stellar reviews at last year’s Venice Film Festival, where it won the Queer Lion, Housekeeping was rapturously received on the autumn festival circuit and selected as North Macedonia’s Oscar entry for Best International Film. I caught up with Stolevski in London, after a successful preview screening of his movie.

Writer-director Goran Stolevski in action. — Photographer… Viktor Irvin Ivanov
Writer-director Goran Stolevski in action. Photographer… Viktor Irvin Ivanov

Congratulations on the film. I was at the screening, and I’ve never heard an audience respond so enthusiastically.
Goran Stolevski: Thank you. That night was an amazing experience. I’ll carry it to my grave.

Housekeeping feels like a massive step-up in of your filmography to date—the complexity of the story, a big cast of characters and the racial and political issues that inform their situation. Was that a natural evolution for you?
I wrote the screenplay in between You Won’t Be Alone and Of an Age. All three films were made back-to-back over a year and a half, so there wasn’t a strategy in of the rollout.

I finished the sound mix for Of an Age on May 18th, 2022. On the morning of May 19th, I was on a plane to Macedonia. I landed on May 20th at 7am. At 11am, we had auditions [for Housekeeping]. The next day we had rehearsals, and it was seven days a week from then on. After the shoot wrapped, I went straight into editing, seven days a week for many months. It was such a whirlwind that it didn’t feel like an evolution. I was just trying to focus on what was in front of me and hang onto my sanity!

And here we are at the Universal offices. It’s hard to think of an environment that’s less like your films.
I know; it’s surreal. You grow up seeing the Universal logo on TV, and you don’t make a movie like this expecting that you’ll see that logo at the start. It was a thrill to show Housekeeping at Venice, and such a validation to see it being treated as a real movie. Somehow, seeing that logo made me realize that it’s a movie everyone should be able to connect to.

Stolevski directs a posse of kids on the set of Housekeeping. — Photographer… Viktor Irvin Ivanov
Stolevski directs a posse of kids on the set of Housekeeping. Photographer… Viktor Irvin Ivanov

The film is being released at a time when LGBTQ rights are, once again, under attack. Did you have a sense of that during the filming process?
I was interested in documenting a time and a place and what life feels like day to day—in this case, for queer people living in Macedonia. I also wanted to focus on portraying the experiences of Roma people. That community was wary of us, because of the filmmakers before me who’ve exploited them, so it was important that we won their trust. It was also important that no one was too idealized because I don’t want to preach. We’re individuals, not demographics.

Do you think this film can change public attitudes about homosexuality, in Macedonia and elsewhere?
Change is something that you hope will happen as a result of your work, but setting out to make change never works. I set out to entertain and engage people emotionally, with as detailed and human a portrayal of these people as possible. 

As queer people, we’re used to reconstructing the notion of family. We have our family of origin and the family that we build where we feel safe. Was the family in the film based on anyone you knew?
The inspiration was a Facebook photo posted by Tony Ayres, a filmmaker friend of mine who moved to Melbourne in the 1970s with his boyfriend and lived in a house with a gay woman. When I saw it, I thought, “That looks like so much fun; I want to live in this space.”

There are no records of these kinds of communities, so I wanted to tell that story, but update it to the present day. The queerness is very much embedded in the family. It exists out of choice but also out of necessity. It’s also similar to many Eastern European families, with people of different generations living together in a crowded household.

You drop us into the action with no setup, very much like Robert Altman does in Nashville. Can you talk about that as a starting point for the audience?
Thank you! No one brings up Altman! You want to talk about a key influence on me before I even knew it? My sound mixer was the first one to mention it.

I’m always petrified of exposition. I wanted to convey the story in layers and hold the viewers’ attention and entertain them so they can stay with me. In TV, you’re not really allowed to do that—you have to announce everything at the beginning and watch it play out. I love that in movies the key moment can come at the end of the scene and retroactively imbue everything before with meaning. Poetry works in the same way. You feel things bubbling in you, and in the final line there’s that moment of revelation. I chase that feeling in all my movies.

Samson Selim, Vladimir Tintor, Anamaria Marinca and Sara Klimoska round out the ensemble.
Samson Selim, Vladimir Tintor, Anamaria Marinca and Sara Klimoska round out the ensemble.

The characters and their relationships feel real and lived in. How did you work with the cast to develop that intimacy?
I went through the whole script with Anamaria before production started. She’s Romanian and had to learn her dialogue phonetically, so her lines didn’t have much room to change once we got going. As an artist, she’s one of the best sounding boards I’ve ever had. We discussed a lot about how much to reveal and when. With the Macedonian cast , they knew the basic premise before they came onboard, but the story was a lot closer to their own lives, so there wasn’t too much that needed explaining.

With Ali, we discover the household at the same time he does. He wakes up with this hot older guy and smuggles himself into the family. He also becomes the best caregiver for Mia.
He’s the mother! We’re still inbuilt to think of mothers and fathers on gendered and stereotypical lines. The person who’s doing the mothering most effectively is the mother. Dita is kind of the distant father.

I loved Anamaria’s performance as Dita. She’s the only introvert in a family of noisy extroverts, the main breadwinner and the only proper adult. She’s also the most closeted character and, in many ways, has the most to lose. How did you work with her?
All my films are my brain split between two people. In this case, I’m split between Dita and Vanesa, the teenage girl. Dita has a lot of me, or at least, how I used to be. That concept of a character who hides their pain is something I can relate to. Anamaria’s acting is so subtle—it’s uncanny how much propping-up of the story she’s doing.

It’s such skillful acting, to make a connection with the viewer and make such an impact while being silent. Even her choices not to cry in big emotional scenes, where a less sophisticated actor would cry. Emotionally, she understands and has the ability to convey every facet of my brain. I feel very lucky to have met her.

Mia Mustafa as rebellious teen Vanesa.
Mia Mustafa as rebellious teen Vanesa.

The moment where Dita says to Vanesa, “I’m not a mother,” broke my heart. It’s fascinating to watch a character working out what they think about something in real time.
I think there’s real generosity in that moment. Rather than sticking to a rigid concept of a traditional conservative mother, she’s asking Vanesa, “What can I offer you?” [She’s] being who she is, with an understanding of her own limitations.

The way Anamaria delivers that scene is so moving to me. She’s not crying or complaining; it comes from a place of actual revelation, which is why she can speak about something so painful in a straightforward way. I’m drawn to stories where people haven’t had a chance to choose the path that life has put them in, and how they deal with that and live the fullest life possible.

The film was selected as North Macedonia’s contender for Best International Film. Given that you live and work in Australia, what are your thoughts on this film representing Macedonia?
I’ve always been wary of how the Balkans are represented in the West—that we’re just peasants, we’re always at war and we’re angry all the time. I wanted to present something in the present day and in an urban setting. The story represents a specific kind of oppression that occurs in Eastern Europe, towards queer people and Roma communities. The film was very important for Romani actresses like Alina and Mia [Mustafa], who get to see themselves represented. That said, Vanesa is a teenager who could exist anywhere.

As a film lover, were there any specific directors, as well as Altman, who informed your aesthetic choices for Housekeeping?
I wasn’t thinking of Altman, but the shape of my brain was made by films like Nashville and McCabe & Mrs. Miller. My favorite Altman film is Thieves Like Us—I still don’t know why that isn’t considered a masterpiece in the same way. Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s film Rosetta was the first time I saw what felt like day-to-day life. But I don’t believe in studying filmmakers or trying to copy their work. When I’m on set, I’m focusing on the world I’ve created and nurturing the actors and helping them do the emotional somersaults they need to do.

Like a mother!
I hope so.

‘Housekeeping for Beginners’ releases in select US cinemas on April 5, via Focus Features.

John Forde

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