Perla (2025)

Interesting facts

Perla is a 2025 drama film written and directed by Alexandra Makárová, starring Rebeka Poláková, Simon Schwarz, Noel Czuczor, and Carmen Diego.

Production

The inspiration for the story was Makárová's mother, who was a Slovak artist and single parent living in Vienna. Her paintings were used in the film to represent Perla's work.

Martin Kudláč writes in Cineuropa that the film "explores personal and social dynamics against the backdrop of Cold War-era Europe, combining themes of migration, exile and reconciliation". Makárová herself said that the film was "a personal reflection on themes of identity and displacement, inspired by her own family history...

Filming took place in the eastern Slovak city of Košice, in a tiny mining village in Slovakia, and Vienna. Georg Weiss was responsible for cinematography. The director, Alexandra Makárová, who had known Weiss for a long time, chose to show of the scenes in Slovakia with mostly dark colours, making it look bleak, while the Vienna scenes are lighter and colourful.

The film features scene that shows a traditional Slovak Easter Monday custom practised in villages, in which groups of men go to the houses of unmarried women, drag them out, throw them into water, and beat them with wooden sticks, and the women have to give them food or alcohol as a gift. The idea behind the custom is that it is supposed to make the women healthier.

The film was produced by Iranian-Austrian filmmaker Arash T. Riahi and Sabine Gruber, and Klaudia Kiczak was responsible for production design. Joana Scrinzi edited the film, and the score was composed by Johannes Winkler and Rusanda Panfili. Makárová had worked with the composers for two years before filming began, when they initially composed a more classical style of music.

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