Mishiali's 'Lion at My Back' Debuts at Karlovy Vary
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- Tonia Mishiali debuts her second feature "The Lion at My Back" in the Crystal Globe competition at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival, tackling immigration, patriarchy, and women's resilience as thematic pillars.
- "The Lion at My Back" follows Senegalese immigrant Mariama (Sokhna Diallo) and Elena Kallinikou's Stella, a Cyprus immigration center worker rebuilding her life, with Mishiali structuring the narrative around two parallel storylines that converge organically.
- Mishiali drew on her own experience as a child refugee after Turkey's 1974 invasion of Cyprus, combining that family trauma with her encounters with African asylum seekers whose striking positivity inspired the character of Mariama.
- The film centers on the mother-daughter bond — Stella is fighting to regain custody of her young daughter while treating Mariama as a daughter too — a thread Mishiali tied directly to her relationship with her teenage daughter.
- Mishiali cited Chantal Akerman's "Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles" as one of the first films that inspired her to embrace a female perspective in her filmmaking.
- "The Lion at My Back" is produced by Bark Like a Cat Films (Cyprus), co-produced by Iris Prods. (Luxembourg) and Avalon Films (Greece), with Yellow Affair handling international sales.
Why it matters: A Crystal Globe competition slot at one of Europe's major festivals gives Cypriot producer Bark Like a Cat Films its highest-profile international platform yet, with Yellow Affair now positioned to sell the film globally — meaningful visibility for a filmmaker whose work centers on refugees and women routinely sidelined in mainstream cinema.
