Written and directed by Goran Stolevski, You Won't Be Alone is a dark and lyrical film about the powers of isolation and community. Set in 19th century Macedonia, You Won't Be Alone follows a young girl who lives a secluded life, thanks to her mother, who wants to keep her from a dangerous being. However, the young girl eventually grows tired of living a life without any friends or connections and ventures out of her safe dwelling space. However, a witch then kidnaps her and turns her into an immortal being with powers that are a blessing and a curse.
During an exclusive interview with CBR, You Won't Be Alone's Stolevski dived into the workings of the witches in his horror film and their inventive creature designs. He also discussed how his feature film directorial debut spotlights the healing powers of community and the ways loneliness and regret can twist our minds into committing heinous acts.
CBR: When did the idea for the film's main character to be unable to speak come into being? So much of the film is centered around this so I would love to know why this was an essential choice for you.
Goran Stolevski: The inner stream of consciousness came to me first, like little bits of an individual life, not necessarily in order, that ended up in different sections of the script in the end. I wanted to get a sense of like, "Who is this person? And how do they function?" I really wanted to live in that space. I really liked that. It felt like a nice space to be in and I think being able to talk would destroy that.
Also, just in terms of a strictly cerebral scientific point of view, technically, if you're not exposed to language before the age of 13, you can't ever properly learn to speak. She wasn't exposed to it at the right stage of life, so she never really speaks. It's not about physical capability. It's about mental, but there are still feelings that are given language. The language is trying to capture something that's going on inside, then it evolves. She does become a little bit more articulate as she matures. But I feel like the part of her that was this imprisoned child leaves a mark. There are walls within herself that can never actually be breached. That's what shaped the words but it was honestly a very instinctive process. It's only when I try to make sense of it, I put words to it because the logic to me always has to come from feelings rather than the brain.
I think it gives the film this lyrical approach where the interior dialogue is almost surreal. We make sense of it through how things sound and feel like poetry even if some of the words don't logically make sense. Is there a line that you were particularly proud of?
It's been a while since I made this -- I've literally made an entirely new film since! [laughs] So I always have to shift my brain back a bit. Oh! When she says, "New rivers open up inside me every day." That's when I cry. Obviously, "And yet... and yet..." That sticks with me as well. And then any time she's talking about the boy she loves.
Yeah! I forget the verbatim dialogue but I love that it's just like every layer, every gender, everything inside her loves this man. The film is set in Macedonia so I was curious if your witches were based on any specific lore or if you took creative license with how witches work in your film?
I completely wanted to go away from folklore and that kind of thing. Initially, I thought I would try and take a folktale from Macedonia and find a premise that I found interesting and build on that, but there isn't much to go off of -- at least that I could find. It wasn't very helpful.
You Won't Be Alone is more historically about how women who were accused of witchcraft were treated. They were so often accused-- both in the East and in the West -- of taking the shape of another human or an animal. I thought, "What if that was real as a perspective on life and on humans?" That was all I needed. And then, I built things in as earthy and grounded. I would work backward, trying to figure out when something ends up as a myth, what was the true story, the scene, or day-to-day mundane reality that led to that. Even in terms of people who would come on set -- like the cast and crew -- when I described the sensibility of the film, I'd be like, "Just don't think about horror films. For now think about it as if a fairy tale was based on a true story of ordinary day-to-day life, in the documentary version of that just true story, not the myth."
I would love to talk about the special effects in this film because I don't think I've ever quite seen a witch like this before. You Won't Be Alone's gore feels intimate. How did this idea of this -- for lack of a better word -- the unfolding of the witch's body come to be?
Again, simplicity and earthiness were our themes. Everyone was very much on the same page. We'd break down the big sequences that were involved and we talked through how I visualized it, and then I would separate things that might not be special effects -- things with prosthetics, and that was it.
But then there were some things like the first transformation that we see with Sara Klimoska's Nevena where not much happened in between. Most of that happened on-screen. Because of the way we've been crafting the story on set, I felt like this needs to be depicted partly for clarity, but partly because I feel a need to be present with the character at this moment. It was something I discussed, just in general terms, but not in detail with the VFX team. It was almost the day before the day of the shot and I went to the onset prosthetics department. I was like, "Okay, so when did I show this? Can we do this? And this?" [laughs] They were fantastic. Larry Van Duynhoven designed it and he prepared some things in advance -- just in case. So we had enough materials to go with and most of that transition actually literally happens on camera. There are no effects.
I think people underestimate how much of that is an actress being so in the moment and capable of being around the camera and performing this action in a way that feels very organic. If it wasn't for the performance, none of those effects would work. There was a little bit of VFX augmenting for that particular sequence, but it was already usable even before the VFX. The VFX just enriched it. So we're in this fortunate position where everyone who was bringing in something wasn't doing it just to like salvage something that wasn't working. It was always about building and expanding something that was already quite strong at the base.
In terms of the prosthetics and gore, I'm extremely squeamish. I was directing like this [covers eyes] half the time [laughs], like, "You put this over there." But I felt like I had to offer it from her perspective. She's been in a black hole for most of her life and then suddenly there are these flurries of sensations coming at her -- all these colors, surfaces, and substances. To her, bowels ripped out of a human are as strange an object as leaves on the trees. I feel like if I'm following her perspective, I have to depict that as bluntly as I do these other things -- no matter what I'm attracted to. It was this that shift in her that we served as best as we can on our limited budget.
To zoom out a bit, it hit me harder than I imagined it would -- especially because it deals with themes of isolation, community, and finding yourself. I cried when she experienced childhood for the first time.
Yeah, me too.
Making this while living in the pandemic, especially, what did you want audiences to take away from this? Or, something that you got out of this experience?
You just reminded me of the other line that gets me. When she says, "I didn't know it could be like this."
Ugh! That line is so good.
I've been saying the two characters -- Nevena and Maria -- are basically my brain split into two. They're both in an isolated place and they want more out of life.
Tangent, sorry, but I know one of the reviews said Nevena was basically like, "There must be more to this provincial life," which is a Beauty & the Beast song and a joke that me and my friends used for me. It was so random that this person who didn't know me threw in that quote, like, "How the hell did that happen?" [laughs] But genuinely there must be more than this provincial life was the driving force unconsciously to both of them. They do all they can within this limited world of trying to live a full and connected life as possible, and it keeps blowing up in their face, and putting them through cycles of abuse and suffering are over and over again. One of the main things is this hunger and hope for connection to other people. In one of them, it's completely destroyed. I think both of those feelings are equally valid. To me, one is obviously devastating. They're both devastating in their own way. Um, so
In terms of audiences -- it's that feeling of these two people thrown into this weird messed-up relationship through almost no making of their own, and then how they're stuck around each other circling, but they can't really belong to one another. They both are craving this sense of belonging and then one of them achieves it and the other one doesn't. And why that happens, and what is it in a person that prevents you from getting to that feeling of belonging? What is it in someone that they can overcome that?
You Won't Be Alone is fantastic. I wouldn't say I had a ball watching it?
It is funny as well. People are always like, "Was that comedy intentional?" And I'm like, "Yes! Jesus." [laughs]
True, watching her laugh for the first time...
And when she's a dog and she's like, "Oh, that's what it's like. I can do that!" It's hilarious.
What's something that either you're currently working on that you can tell our audiences about? Or something that you'd like to work on in the future?
I'm finishing a film now. It's in sound mixing and I'm in pre-production on the third one that I'll be going to Macedonia to film. So the second one is wrapping up now. They're all both completely different. The second one I'm wrapping up right now is a grungy gay love story set in the blandest suburbs of Melbourne in the 1990s -- basically, roaming around, looking and sounding a lot like me. It's not particularly autobiographical. The third one is set in Macedonia in the present today. It's about a queer woman who's forced to raise her dead partner's children against her will and trying to find a way to do it legally in a setting that doesn't quite allow it.
They're very different films. But I think that there's a thread of people who are outsiders and in very emotionally intense situations. So I'm very curious to see what people make of that, expecting another You Won't Be Alone movie. Like, "Oh boy, this will be very different."
You Won't Be Alone hits theaters on April 1.