MILAN — Miu Miu is going through a phase of major growth and high visibility, reporting a 50 percent increase in retail sales in the first half of the year and climbing to the second spot of Lyst Index’s hottest brand list for the period between January to March, which is its highest ranking since the list began.
The results reflect the strength of the brand, its positioning and authenticity, stemming from founder Miuccia Prada’s wish to create a space for ideas and conversation around emancipation and women’s empowerment — in addition to directional and innovative collections.
In this vein, the Miu Miu Women’s Tales, the series of short films introduced in 2011, have been allowing women directors to speak up and offer their points of view, remaining one of the only consistent commissioning platforms exclusively for female filmmakers.
The 26th Miu Miu Women’s Tales film, “Stane,” will be unveiled at the Venice Film Festival’s “Giornate degli Autori” on Sept. 3, directed by Croatian filmmaker, writer and producer Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović.
To further amplify and solidify the program, supporting rising talent in the film industry, nominating future directors, and to further ensure visibility for the series across channels and online, the Italian brand will on Tuesday reveal that it has established the new Miu Miu Women’s Tales Committee.
The committee comprises cofounding members Miuccia Prada and Prada Group talent relations special projects director Verde Visconti; award winning “Selma” director, writer and producer Ava DuVernay, who directed the fifth Women’s Tales; Australian costume, production and set designer Catherine Martin, who won two Academy Awards for “Moulin Rouge!” in 2002 and another two for “The Great Gatsby” in 2014, and American actress, writer and filmmaker Maggie Gyllenhaal, a friend of the house who fronted the fall 2004 ad campaign for the brand.
“Cinema has been a longtime passion and has also been an important backbone of my education,” said Prada. “With the Tales, we created a platform for talented directors: through their gaze we have opened a conversation on the world of femininity and vanity and what it means today. A conversation with women about women.”
In addition to the screening, a two-day conversation program will take place on Sept. 3 and 4, hosted by Penny Martin, editor in chief of “The Gentlewoman,” bringing together Miu Miu Women’s Tales directors and advisers to discuss the contemporary environment for female filmmaking.
Kusijanović, who was born in Dubrovnik and is based in New York, admitted in an interview with WWD that she had always wanted to direct a film for the series, and that she had been brainstorming ideas during the pandemic before she was actually invited to be part of the Women’s Tales series.
The director expressed her pride in being up next, following “such immense talent. Those 25 women before me are women I have looked up to since I’ve been a filmmaker. It’s humbling and emotional for me to be part of this,” she confessed.
Previous directors include Zoe Cassavetes, who kicked off the series; Agnès Varda; Chloë Sevigny; Alice Rohrwacher; Miranda July; Soyong Kim; Dakota Fanning; Haifaa Al-Mansour; Janicza Bravo, and Carla Simon, to name a few.
Of the series, Kusijanović enthused that “it’s such an incredible platform — with a fashion brand that allows you to create on a highest level in pure liberty, giving full carte blanche,” praising Prada for her “brave” attitude in letting the directors be “free to use their tools.”
Fashion in movies is part of the characters, “an additional expression on one’s personality,” and she sat down to watch Miu Miu’s fall collection, first unveiled in March. “I wanted to come up with a story that would not be disjointed from the clothes; everything should be in synchronicity,” she said.
Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović
Kusijanović worked for a year in the construction industry, which led her for some time to imagine a character inspired by that world and “very close to my heart, but I was keeping an open mind until I saw what the collection would be like. The film spirits worked together to make things aligned,” she said smiling. “It felt like it was fitting naturally with what I was really interested in telling.”
The titular character, Stane, is in charge of a construction site in New York, and is soon to inherit the family business from her father, who grew it as a Croatian immigrant, also building on the American dream. “But Stane’s marriage is under threat of demolition. What ensues is a public reckoning between traditional, patriarchal expectations made upon wives versus Stane’s own pain and anger. But Stane is building her own life story, though — outside of the permission of men,” explained the director.
A still from “Stane.”
Speaking of Miu Miu’s fall collection, Kusijanović realized it “was so much about power, and it’s very interesting to me that in the last decade a lot is spoken of the need to give power to women. It’s an interesting wording, ‘give power to women,’ [it] means that women don’t have power and someone that has it gives it to them, so that your power is as powerful as someone who gives it to you. This, however, means that it can also be taken away by someone that is above you. We never speak of giving power to men, usually the wording is men in power. And I was very interested in that notion of power. If we are truly ‘giving power to women,’ is that power?”
Asked if directing feels like being in power, she responded in the negative. “Directing is a very horizontal hierarchy. Yes, the director is at the top, but it’s only as good as his or her collaborators although it’s powerful to be surrounded by creative people joined in a common goal. Power is to be able to speak what you feel, to have a platform, opportunity and resources to say and express yourself,” she opined.
Miu Miu’s collection, she felt, is “very feminine but also very androgynous, there are elements of masculine, shielding, oversized almost like a tower of protection but also very transparent, erotic, sensual and revealing and I love that contrast and I really felt it speaks so well to the world I am interested in.”
Although all her films deal with the plight of women, Kusijanović said she never thinks first “through politics or social message. I always start from character.” And from there the “issues of the world naturally emerge.”
This will be her first time showing at the Venice Film Festival and she admitted she was very excited. With her film, she said simply that she was “trying to portray a slice of life, a little moment, a couple of hours in one woman’s life, and it is about power within a career, marriage and family.”
Kusijanović’s directorial feature debut, “Murina,” was executive produced by Martin Scorsese and premiered at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival in the Directors Fortnight section. It was honored with the Caméra d’Or Award presented to the Best First Film. Her short “Into the Blue” was awarded at the 67th Berlin International Film Festival. She is a member of the Academy of The Motion Picture, Arts and Sciences.
“Stane” will be available to stream on Mubi globally from Sept. 4. The 25th film of the Miu Miu Women’s Tales series, “Eye two times mouth,” directed by Mexican independent film director, screenwriter, and producer Lila Aviles, and first shown earlier this year, will also be screened on Sept. 3 in Venice.