Premiering in the Crystal Globe competition at Karlovy Vary, Tonia Mishiali’s second feature, The Lion at My Back, brings together two women whose lives seem to sit at very different distances from hardship: Mariama, a young asylum seeker, and Stella, a Cyprus-born former drug addict working at a refugee center. The film’s central idea is that suffering cannot really be ranked from the outside, and that shared vulnerability can matter more than the differences between people’s circumstances.
The story begins with Mariama’s 18th birthday celebration inside the center, a moment that turns abruptly into displacement when she ages out of the facility and is expected to leave without any clear support. Sokhna Diallo plays her as calm, open and unexpectedly self-possessed, even though the film later makes clear that she has already endured a great deal. Stella, played by Elena Kallinikou, is introduced as guarded and volatile, carrying her own burdens, including a fractured family situation and an addiction she is still trying to manage.
What follows is less a conventional plot than a study of how the two women register each other. Their first sustained exchange at the birthday gathering hints at a connection that is part curiosity, part recognition. Mariama is drawn to Stella’s severity, while Stella seems both irritated and intrigued by the younger woman’s ease. As the film moves forward, Mariama’s trust and sociability begin to affect Stella in ways that matter, and Stella in turn becomes a practical lifeline, helping her with housing and work.
According to the review, Mishiali’s film is most effective when it resists trying to turn this relationship into something overly poetic or sentimental. Its observational style, staying close to the two leads, gives the drama a grounded quality that makes their differences and similarities feel immediate. The review notes that the film starts to lose some of that strength when it leans too hard into emotional emphasis, especially in its final stretch. Even so, The Lion at My Back is described as a promising attempt at a redemption story built around friendship, healing and the complicated ways people can change one another.
Source: variety.com
