‘I was just unemployed’: The unknown Australian filmmaker who is suddenly everywhere | gmaddox
Stolevski is now shooting a third film, queer drama, in Skopje, North Macedonia. And he is talking about the next two films he is desperate to make from the 13 scripts he has written.“I’ve been willing to become an overnight success for 20 years,” Stolevski says on a Zoom call from Skopje.The 36-year-old, who arrived in Australia from the former Yugoslavia at the age of nine, is baffled by what has been happening.
Since deciding to become a filmmaker in year 11 at Macleod College, he has made 25 shorts in 10 languages while writing feature film scripts. He jokes that his specialties are difficult women and gay sex. Goran Stolevski’s second film, Of an Age, which is opening Melbourne International Film Festival in August.After Stolevski won best short at Sundance Film Festival in 2018, Hollywood’s Focus Features wanted to back“They offered me an extra $3 million to shoot it in English but I said no, therefore giving away a lot of my income which we had to reinvest in the film,” Stolevski says.
The success of that film has meant “the people who used to reject my financing applications give me financing”.