Fantasy (2025) by Kukla
MK / SI | 2025 | 98 min | Identity Discovery Drama
➡️ Where to Watch: Festival Scope Pro — Industry Professionals | Festival Circuit
When Meeting Someone Different Changes What You Believe Is Possible for Yourself
Mihrije, Sina and Jasna are three tomboy friends in Slovenia whose lives begin changing after they meet Fantasy, a trans woman who introduces them to possibilities around gender, desire and identity that exist beyond the roles they already know. Fantasy does not simply enter their friendship as another character; her presence changes the way the young women understand themselves.
That makes Fantasy less a story about finding the correct identity than about expanding the possibilities available to one. Mihrije, Sina and Jasna already resist conventional expectations around femininity, but resistance does not automatically provide an alternative. Meeting Fantasy gives difference a visible form. Curiosity becomes attraction, attraction creates experimentation and experimentation begins weakening categories that previously appeared fixed.
➡️ Movie Insight: Fantasy treats identity as something that can expand when people encounter lives beyond their existing frame of reference. Fantasy does not tell the three friends who they should become; simply knowing her makes previously unimaginable possibilities visible. Self-discovery begins when difference stops representing something outside them and starts revealing something they might recognize within themselves.
Why This Movie Matters Right Now: Identity Is Increasingly Shaped by Exposure to More Ways of Living
People do not construct identity entirely through introspection. They also understand themselves through the people, communities and lifestyles they encounter. Someone can grow up believing there are only a limited number of ways to express gender, build relationships, pursue a career or organize a life until another person demonstrates that a different possibility exists.
Fantasy turns that mechanism into a coming-of-age story. Mihrije, Sina and Jasna have already developed identities partly through rejecting traditional expectations, but Fantasy introduces something different from rejection: possibility. Her presence encourages them to consider what they might actively want rather than defining themselves only against what they do not want.
The shift becomes:
WHAT I KNOW → WHO I MEET → WHAT I DISCOVER → WHAT I QUESTION → WHAT I TRY → WHO I MAY BECOME
➡️ Why It Matters: Exposure to different ways of living can expand identity without requiring people to abandon who they already are. New reference points make previously abstract possibilities feel imaginable, allowing curiosity to replace assumptions about what a life is supposed to look like. Fantasy captures the moment when encountering someone different stops being primarily about understanding them and starts changing how you understand yourself.
Should You Watch It?: A Coming-of-Age Story Where Curiosity Matters More Than Labels
Watch Fantasy if you prefer coming-of-age films that treat identity as exploration rather than a journey toward one predetermined answer. The film brings gender, desire, friendship and cultural expectations together through characters whose understanding of themselves changes as their experiences broaden.
The title character is central to that process without becoming its only subject. Fantasy's presence affects Mihrije, Sina and Jasna differently, allowing the film to treat identity as individual rather than prescriptive. The same encounter can generate curiosity, attraction, uncertainty or transformation depending on what each person brings to it.
The film also carries a distinctive cultural texture through its North Macedonian and Slovenian production background and its use of Macedonian, Slovenian, Albanian, Serbian and Bosnian languages. Rather than separating gender from culture, Fantasy places personal discovery inside a world where identity is already shaped by multiple overlapping communities and expectations.
➡️ Viewing Recommendation: Watch Fantasy for the way it treats self-discovery as something that happens between people rather than entirely inside them. Its characters do not receive simple answers about gender or desire; they encounter new possibilities and decide what those possibilities mean individually. The film is strongest when curiosity itself becomes part of growing up.
Why Everyone Is Talking About It: A Locarno Discovery Becoming an International Festival Success
Fantasy entered the international festival conversation through Locarno 2025, where Kukla competed for the Golden Leopard in the Filmmakers of the Present section. Its festival trajectory subsequently expanded through European showcases and awards recognition, turning Kukla's feature into a visible new voice within contemporary Balkan and queer cinema.
The supplied awards record lists 6 wins and 3 nominations. At the 2025 Slovene Film Festival, Fantasy won Vesna awards for Best Production Design, Best Costume Design, Best Make-Up and Special Achievement. Thessaloniki Film Festival awarded Kukla a Mermaid Award Special Mention, specifically recognizing Fantasy alongside Bearcave for presenting powerful characters who challenge conventions and redefine social boundaries. The film was also nominated in Pula's 2026 Regional Programme.
Its international trajectory has another significant dimension: according to the supplied IMDb information, Fantasy is Slovenia's official submission for Best International Feature Film at the 99th Academy Awards in 2027.
The momentum becomes:
LOCARNO COMPETITION → EUROPEAN FESTIVAL EXPANSION → SLOVENIAN CRAFT RECOGNITION → THESSALONIKI QUEER RECOGNITION → INTERNATIONAL VISIBILITY → SLOVENIAN OSCAR SUBMISSION
➡️ Viral Potential: Fantasy has built momentum by combining a distinctive visual identity with characters whose exploration of gender, friendship and desire invites wider conversation about how identity develops. Festival recognition has expanded that visibility, while Slovenia's Oscar submission gives the film another international discovery point. Its strongest word-of-mouth hook is also its simplest idea: sometimes meeting one person can completely change the possibilities you imagine for yourself.
Why Fantasy Stands Out: Difference Becomes an Invitation Rather Than a Threat
Stories about difference frequently organize themselves around conflict. Someone enters a community, challenges established norms and becomes the object through which the surrounding characters reveal either prejudice or acceptance. Fantasy uses a more generative structure. Difference does not merely expose boundaries; it creates possibilities.
Mihrije, Sina and Jasna already exist somewhat outside conventional femininity as tomboys. Yet rejecting one identity does not automatically tell them what alternatives exist. Fantasy changes that. Her presence gives gender expression, desire and self-definition another visible form, allowing the friends to reconsider assumptions they may not previously have recognized as assumptions.
The important movement is therefore not:
DIFFERENCE → CONFLICT
but:
DIFFERENCE → CURIOSITY → POSSIBILITY → SELF-DISCOVERY
➡️ Cinema Insight: Fantasy treats difference as something capable of expanding identity rather than simply challenging it. The title character does not arrive to provide answers or demand that others become like her; her presence makes a wider range of possibilities visible. Kukla turns encounter itself into the catalyst for coming of age.
Movie Trend: Identity Discovery Drama — When Meeting Someone Different Changes How You See Yourself
The three friends begin with identities they already understand through friendship, culture and their rejection of conventional gender expectations. Fantasy introduces an unfamiliar reference point. Curiosity gradually becomes a mechanism of self-discovery because understanding someone different also requires reconsidering assumptions about oneself.
Movie Trend Formula:FRIENDSHIP → TOMBOY IDENTITY → RESISTANCE TO EXPECTED ROLES → FANTASY ARRIVES → CURIOSITY → ATTRACTION → NEW POSSIBILITIES → SELF-QUESTIONING → EXPERIMENTATION → OLD CATEGORIES WEAKEN → IDENTITY EXPANDS
The important distinction is that Fantasy does not necessarily replace one identity with another. The encounter enlarges the range of identities and desires the characters can imagine. Discovery therefore becomes additive rather than corrective.
➡️ Movie Trend: Identity Discovery Dramas increasingly treat coming of age as an expansion of possibilities rather than a search for one definitive label. Encounters with different people, communities and ways of living give characters new reference points through which to reconsider themselves. Fantasy makes that process relational: understanding another person becomes inseparable from discovering previously unexplored parts of yourself.
Broad Trend: Identity Expansion — When Seeing Different Ways of Living Changes What We Believe Is Possible for Ourselves
Identity develops partly through available reference points. People learn what relationships look like by observing relationships. They learn what careers seem possible by seeing who occupies them. They absorb ideas about gender, family, success, lifestyle and belonging from the people and environments surrounding them. When those reference points are narrow, the possibilities people imagine for themselves can also remain narrow.
Exposure changes the equation. Meeting someone whose life does not follow familiar expectations can transform an abstract possibility into something tangible. The response does not have to be imitation. The more important effect is expansion: if another way of living exists, perhaps my own options are wider than I assumed.
This creates an Identity Expansion progression:
LIMITED FRAME OF REFERENCE → EXPOSURE TO DIFFERENCE → CURIOSITY → SELF-QUESTIONING → EXPERIMENTATION → EXPANDED POSSIBILITY → IDENTITY EVOLUTION
Fantasy keeps this broader trend extremely close to its characters. Fantasy does not persuade Mihrije, Sina and Jasna through argument. She gives them another reference point simply by existing differently within their world. The friends can then decide individually which parts of that encounter resonate with them.
Outside the movie, the same mechanism can operate across relationships, careers, gender expression, cultural identity, family structures and lifestyle choices. People frequently discover possibilities because another person's life demonstrates that the rules they inherited are not the only rules available.
➡️ Broad Trend: Identity Expansion describes how exposure to different ways of living can enlarge what people imagine for themselves. Representation matters not only because people want to see identities they already recognize, but because encountering unfamiliar possibilities can generate new questions about their own lives. Fantasy captures this shift by making difference a source of possibility rather than something that needs to be resolved.
Why Identity Discovery Dramas Are Popular: Audiences Are Looking Beyond Fixed Definitions of Growing Up
Traditional coming-of-age narratives often move toward definition. The protagonist experiences confusion, passes through a formative event and eventually understands who they are. Contemporary identity stories can complicate that progression by allowing uncertainty and exploration to remain meaningful outcomes rather than problems that must immediately be solved.
Fantasy fits this shift because its characters encounter possibilities before they necessarily possess language or certainty for everything they experience. Curiosity has value in itself. Desire can reveal something without immediately defining everything. Identity can evolve without requiring every stage of that evolution to become permanent.
That makes these stories particularly resonant for audiences accustomed to navigating increasingly visible varieties of gender expression, relationships, lifestyles and communities. More possibilities can create greater freedom, but they can also make identity more exploratory.
➡️ Audience Motivation: Identity Discovery Dramas give audiences permission to treat uncertainty as part of self-understanding rather than evidence that something is missing. Characters can experiment, change and encounter contradictory desires without immediately converting every experience into a permanent definition. Fantasy makes that openness central to its appeal by presenting discovery as expansion rather than arrival.
Viewer Profile: Identity Explorers - Viewers Choosing Coming-of-Age Stories About People Discovering Possibilities Beyond the Identities They Inherited
Identity Explorers are drawn to stories where characters question the categories through which they have previously understood themselves. They respond to narratives about discovery, experimentation and the difference between identities inherited from families or communities and identities developed through personal experience.
Audience Dimension | Profile |
Core Audience | Viewers drawn to coming-of-age drama, queer cinema, female friendship and identity stories |
Age Group | Younger-adult and adult audiences interested in contemporary identity and social change |
Lifestyle | Curious, culturally engaged audiences interested in gender, desire, belonging and alternative lifestyles |
Cinema Taste | International arthouse, queer cinema, female coming-of-age, visually expressive drama and character-led storytelling |
Streaming Behavior | Festival discoveries, awards-driven viewing, emerging filmmakers and international recommendations |
Discovery Mindset | Looks for films that challenge fixed categories and introduce unfamiliar cultural or personal perspectives |
➡️ Audience Insight: Identity Explorers respond to characters who discover that the identities available to them are larger than the categories they inherited. Fantasy gives Mihrije, Sina and Jasna a new reference point without prescribing what each should become. Their attraction as characters comes from watching possibility expand before certainty arrives.
What This Movie Means for the Industry: Representation Is Moving From Recognition Toward Possibility
Representation is often discussed through recognition: audiences want to see people whose identities and experiences resemble their own. Fantasy demonstrates another function. Characters can also matter because they introduce audiences—and other characters—to lives they have never previously considered.
That changes representation from:
I SEE MYSELF
to:
I SEE ANOTHER POSSIBILITY
The distinction is particularly useful for coming-of-age cinema because young characters develop identity partly through discovering what exists beyond their immediate environment. A character such as Fantasy therefore does not need to represent every trans experience or function as an explanatory device. Her individuality is precisely what makes her disruptive: she demonstrates one possible way of existing.
The film's festival recognition, including the Thessaloniki Mermaid Special Mention for challenging conventions and social boundaries, reinforces how central that approach is to its identity.
➡️ Industry Insight: Representation can do more than validate identities audiences already understand; it can expand the range of lives they consider imaginable. Characters become powerful when they are allowed to exist as individuals rather than educational symbols for a category. Fantasy shows how inclusive storytelling can generate curiosity by presenting difference as possibility rather than explanation.
Creative Analysis: Turning Someone Else's Freedom Into a Mirror for Your Own Possibilities
Fantasy builds self-discovery through interaction. The characters do not retreat from the world to discover a hidden, complete identity waiting inside them; they change because relationships expose them to experiences that make their existing categories feel insufficient. Kukla therefore makes encounter itself the creative engine of the film.
Storytelling: Making One New Person Transform Three Different Journeys
Fantasy's arrival does not produce one uniform transformation. Mihrije, Sina and Jasna respond differently because the encounter activates different questions within each of them. That prevents Fantasy from becoming a simple narrative device whose purpose is to deliver one lesson about gender or desire.
The structure instead suggests that the same person can represent completely different possibilities depending on who is looking. Fantasy opens the door, but each friend determines what exists beyond it.
Direction: Making Transformation Feel Like Discovery Rather Than Explanation
Kukla approaches identity through experience rather than constant explanation. The film allows curiosity, attraction, friendship and visual expression to communicate transformation without requiring every emotional shift to become dialogue.
That makes discovery feel less instructional. The characters are not moving through a predetermined sequence of lessons about gender; they are encountering feelings and possibilities before necessarily understanding exactly where those experiences will lead.
Performances: Letting Identity Emerge Through Interaction
Sarah Al Saleh, Alina Juhart, Mina Milovanovic and Mia Skrbinac anchor a story where identity develops through relationships. The friendship group matters because the characters observe, influence and respond to one another rather than experiencing transformation independently.
Fantasy's presence changes the group's emotional chemistry, but the friends also become mirrors for each other. Identity therefore emerges socially: who someone becomes is affected by who surrounds them.
Visual Style: Making Self-Discovery Feel Like Entering Another Reality
The supplied awards record shows significant recognition for the film's visual construction, including Slovenian Film Festival wins for production design, costume design and make-up. Those craft elements are particularly meaningful in a film about identity because appearance, clothing, bodies and environments become part of how characters experiment with possibility.
The visual world can therefore participate directly in the central progression:
KNOWN SELF → FASCINATION → EXPERIMENTATION → TRANSFORMATION → EXPANDED SELF
Rather than treating style as decoration, Fantasy can use it to make identity exploration physically visible.
Themes: Sometimes We Need to See Another Possibility Before We Can Imagine Our Own
Fantasy's most distinctive idea is that self-discovery does not always begin with looking inward. Sometimes another person creates the question.
Mihrije, Sina and Jasna have already received models of femininity, relationships and belonging from the cultures surrounding them. Their tomboy identities partly resist those models, but resistance remains connected to the thing being rejected. Fantasy introduces something more expansive: an example that demonstrates identity can be assembled differently altogether.
Difference therefore becomes generative.
What Makes It Different: Fantasy Changes the Story by Existing, Not by Teaching
Fantasy could easily have become an explanatory character whose narrative purpose was to educate the other women about gender identity. The stronger possibility is contained in the film's premise itself: she changes them through encounter.
She lives differently. They notice. Curiosity develops. Their existing assumptions become less stable.
That makes Fantasy a catalyst without reducing her to a lesson. Her freedom becomes a mirror through which other characters recognize possibilities within themselves.
➡️ Creative Insight: Fantasy turns self-discovery into something relational: the characters understand themselves differently because another person's existence expands the possibilities available to them. Fantasy does not provide Mihrije, Sina and Jasna with a new identity; she disrupts the assumption that their existing options are the only ones available. Kukla's most distinctive idea is that identity can change not because someone tells us who to become, but because meeting them makes us realize we could become more than we previously imagined.
If You Liked Fantasy: When Meeting Someone Different Expands Who You Can Imagine Becoming
Masc (2026) by Bertil Nilsson: When Searching for the Right Way to Be a Man Opens the Door to Different Versions of Yourself
Robin, a young autistic man desperate to fit in, experiments with different masculine roles as he tries to understand what kind of man he is supposed to become. Rather than presenting masculinity as a stable identity waiting to be discovered, Bertil Nilsson turns it into something Robin observes, tests and performs while searching for belonging.
➡️ Why It Connects: Masc and Fantasy both explore identity through exposure to possibilities rather than through predetermined answers. Mihrije, Sina and Jasna begin reconsidering gender and desire after meeting Fantasy, while Robin experiments with different models of masculinity as he tries to understand where he belongs. Both films suggest that identity develops when familiar categories stop feeling sufficient and people begin testing other ways of being.
➡️ Where to Watch: UK — Theatrical / festival release; streaming release not yet announced.
Sauna (2025) by Mathias Broe: When Falling for Someone Changes the Way You Understand Gender, Desire and Yourself
Johan is a gay man immersed in Copenhagen's nightlife when he meets William, a trans man whose presence complicates the assumptions through which Johan has understood attraction, identity and relationships. Their connection becomes both a romance and a confrontation with the limits of the categories Johan previously used to understand himself.
➡️ Why It Connects: Sauna shares Fantasy's strongest mechanism: meeting another person creates possibilities that previously existed outside the protagonist's frame of reference. Fantasy expands how Mihrije, Sina and Jasna understand gender and desire, while William forces Johan to reconsider what attraction means within his existing identity. Both films make difference generative—the new person does not simply become someone to understand but a catalyst for understanding yourself differently.
Crossing (2024) by Levan Akin: When Entering Someone Else's World Changes the Boundaries of Your Own
Retired teacher Lia travels from Georgia to Istanbul searching for her long-lost trans niece Tekla and meets Evrim, a lawyer and trans-rights activist who helps her navigate a community previously outside her experience. The journey gradually becomes more than a search for one missing person as unfamiliar lives and relationships expand Lia's understanding of identity, family and belonging.
➡️ Why It Connects: Crossing and Fantasy both treat encounter as a mechanism for expanding perspective. Fantasy's presence makes new possibilities around gender and desire visible to three young women, while Lia's encounters in Istanbul introduce her to people and experiences beyond the boundaries of the world she previously knew. Neither film treats difference simply as something outsiders must learn to tolerate; difference becomes the experience through which their characters' understanding of other people—and eventually themselves—grows.
➡️ If You Liked Insight: Masc, Sauna and Crossing all explore identity through encounters that make previously unfamiliar ways of living visible. Their characters discover that understanding someone different can destabilize assumptions about masculinity, gender, desire or belonging and expand the possibilities they imagine for themselves. Fantasy belongs to this same shift because meeting someone new does not simply change how its characters see another person—it changes the boundaries of how they see themselves.
Final Verdict: Sometimes Discovering Yourself Begins With Discovering Someone Else
Fantasy understands that identity is not formed in isolation. People inherit categories from families, cultures and communities, but they also encounter new possibilities through friendships, attraction and the lives of people who move differently through the world.
That makes Fantasy's arrival transformative without requiring her to transform everyone in the same way. She introduces possibility. Mihrije, Sina and Jasna determine what that possibility reveals about themselves.
The film's larger achievement is therefore making difference productive. Encountering someone outside your existing frame of reference does not have to threaten identity; it can make identity larger.
➡️ Final Verdict: Fantasy turns difference into a catalyst for self-discovery rather than a source of simple conflict. Meeting Fantasy allows three friends to question assumptions around gender, desire and identity because her life makes alternatives visible. The film ultimately suggests that becoming yourself can begin when someone else shows you that more ways of being yourself exist.
Quick Facts: Identity Expands When New Possibilities Become Visible
Title | Fantasy |
Director | Kukla Kesherovic |
Writer | Kukla Kesherovic |
Lead Cast | Sarah Al Saleh, Alina Juhart, Mina Milovanovic, Mia Skrbinac |
Year | 2025 |
Runtime | 98 min |
Countries | North Macedonia / Slovenia |
Languages | Macedonian / Slovenian / Albanian / Serbian / Bosnian |
French Release | November 25, 2026 |
Awards | 6 wins & 3 nominations in the supplied IMDb record |
Major Festival Launch | Locarno Film Festival 2025 — Filmmakers of the Present |
Oscar Context | Slovenia's submission for Best International Feature Film at the 99th Academy Awards |
Movie Trend | Identity Discovery Drama — When Meeting Someone Different Changes How You See Yourself |
Broad Trend | Identity Expansion — When Seeing Different Ways of Living Changes What We Believe Is Possible for Ourselves |
Viewer Profile | Identity Explorers |
Core Conflict | Three friends' understanding of gender, desire and identity changes after they meet Fantasy |
Creative Hook | Another person's freedom becomes the catalyst for expanding the characters' own possibilities |
Core Themes | Identity, gender, desire, friendship, femininity, culture, self-discovery and belonging |
Final Insights: Identity Expands When Possibility Becomes Visible
Identity Expansion reflects a broader shift from understanding identity only through fixed categories toward recognizing how experience continually reshapes what people imagine for themselves. Exposure to different relationships, cultures, gender expressions and lifestyles creates new reference points. People do not necessarily copy those examples; their importance lies in demonstrating that alternatives exist.
That makes visibility consequential beyond representation alone. Seeing different ways of living can give people language for feelings they already possess, introduce possibilities they had never considered or simply weaken the assumption that inherited norms are inevitable. Identity becomes less about selecting from a predetermined set of options and more about discovering which possibilities actually fit.
➡️ Final Insight: Identity Expansion begins when exposure makes previously invisible possibilities imaginable. Other people's differences can become reference points through which individuals reconsider their own desires, assumptions and futures. Fantasy captures that process by showing that sometimes the person who changes your understanding of yourself does so simply by showing you another way it is possible to live.
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