Goran Stolevski does not like being in front of the camera. “That was the most uncomfortable 25 minutes of my life,” the Macedonian-Australian director laughs over the phone, after a Guardian photoshoot in Melbourne’s Edinburgh Gardens. There’s something artificial, he says, about sitting still, subjecting yourself to the steely gaze of a lens. He glimpsed a test shot at one point and winced.
If the past 12 months are anything to go by, he’ll have to get used to the exposure. In that time, Stolevski’s debut feature You Won’t Be Alone – released in Australia this week – has ignited his career, landing him a coveted spot in Variety’s list of directors to watch before it had even premiered in the US, where it was met with a flurry of rabid acclaim. It was one of his two films that screened at Melbourne international film festival in August; the other, achy queer romance Of an Age, opened the festival – and has just won him Australia’s richest film prize.
