Goran Stolevski is the rare rising filmmaker with three strong features right out of the gate in the last few years. He made a splash at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival with his witchy, body-jumping folk horror parable “You Won’t Be Alone,” starring Noomi Rapace, and immediately followed it up with the decade-spanning gay romance “Of an Age” and, now, has North Macedonia’s entry for the 2024 Academy Award for Best International Feature, “Housekeeping for Beginners.”
All three films have been housed at Focus Features, which releases the Venice Film Festival premiere “Housekeeping for Beginners” in theaters in January. IndieWire shares the trailer for the film exclusively below ahead of the Oscar shortlist announcement next week on December 21. Stolevski returns to his Macedonian roots (he now lives in Australia) for “Housekeeping,” a raw cinéma vérité tale of unlikely found family led by what was certainly dream-casting for the director: “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” star Anamaria Marinca.
The Romanian actress plays healthcare worker Dita, living in modern-day North Macedonia in its republic of Skopje with her Roma girlfriend Suada’s (Alina Serban) children and their friends. Occupying a rowdy household, Dita promises her terminally ill partner that she’ll continue to mother her kids after death. But that brings its own complications once Dita’s live-in gay best friend Toni (Vladimir Tintor) is forced to register as the girls’ legal father to avoid separation. LGBTQ citizens of Macedonia, after all, lack the legal protections of opposite-sex couples, forcing this patched-together group to find common ground under a divided roof.
Stolevski shot “Housekeeping for Beginners” in real locations without rehearsals while encouraging improv, which lends to the freewheeling spirit of a movie where layabouts seem to come and go from their walls. Toni, for one, has a twinky boyfriend (Samson Selim) who won’t back off after a one-night stand. Plus, Sauda’s daughters, which include tiny troublemaker Mia and rebellious teenager Vanessa, are already a handful. Stolevski invites you into the panic and chaos of this found family’s plight, as well as their joys.
“All my films could really be called ‘You Won’t Be Alone,’” Stolevski told IndieWire earlier this year while discussing “Of an Age,” noting that his two other films were financed before “You Won’t Be Alone” came to be at Sundance. “It might be a lot of trouble from now on,” Stolevski joked of getting his idiosyncratic and personal queer stories off the ground. He’s already way ahead of the game from the looks of it.
Focus Features opens “Housekeeping for Beginners” in select theaters on Friday, January 26, 2024.Watch the trailer below.
