'You Won't Be Alone': How Noomi Rapace Gave Soul To Macedonian Genre Pic

In the wake of Lamb, with You Won’t Be Alone, premiering at Sundance this Saturday, one would think that Noomi Rapace is building toward an other-worldly type franchise of femme protagonists “about motherhood, and not so much dialogue” quips the actress.

In fact, it was in the final days of production on Lamb that she began to enter the world of You Won’t Be Alone, as she began talks with the pic’s filmmaker Goran Stolevski over zoom.

You Won’t Be Alone is quite the anomaly among genre films, set in a rural 19th century Macedonian village. There’s witches, there’s vampires, swapped souls with the action set off by a scary, red-wrinkled spirit who makes a bloody mark on a girl baby, laying claim to her soul. The young feral witch accidentally kills a peasant and assume the peasant’s shape to see what life is like in her skin, igniting a deep-seated curiosity to experience life inside the bodies of others.

Did such witch and vampire-like folklore exist in Macedonian culture?

“The mythology of the story, most of it was invented by me,” says Stolveski who attended the Victorian College of the Arts in Australia.

The director-writer said he took inspiration from Eastern European tales of “women accused of witchcraft taking a shape of another animal; if you can do that, how amazing, it’s another way to look at life.”

What’s also unique about You Won’t Be Alone is the way it’s shot for a genre movie, evoking the imagery and dialogue of Terrence Malick’s work. Stolevski gives a nod to the auteur, but also to Virginia Woolf who “captures consciousness through words”, which also impacted his visual sensibility.

In describing how You Won’t Be Alone is more than a genre feature, Rapace says “we were telling a story about belonging, being part of something, finding your identity in places on Earth, the desperation to be felt, seen and heard.”

You Won’t Be Alone from Focus Features opens on April 1. Watch our interview with Rapace and Stolevski above.