Kukla

Director

Katarina Bogdanović (Kukla) is a Slovenian artist, musician, and filmmaker whose work bridges magic and realism while drawing deeply from her Slavic heritage. Known for her visually striking style, she first gained international attention with her short film “Sisters”, which won the Grand Prix at the 2021 Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival. Her feature debut, “Fantasy”—an expansion of “Sisters”—premiered in the Filmmakers of the Present competition at the 78th Locarno Film Festival in August 2025 and is set to compete at the Sarajevo Film Festival. Shot across Ljubljana, Trieste, and Kruševo, the film explores gender identity, desire, and societal pressures through an emotionally immersive and visually layered lens. Beyond cinema, Kukla is an accomplished musician and video director, having created a series of viral music videos for Balkan pop stars that collectively exceed 100 million views. Her work is marked by a fascination with emotional authenticity on set—sometimes inviting her actors to “dance it out” as part of the creative process—and by her signature glossy, dreamlike in-camera effects. A lover of Paris and the Dalmatian coast (where she enjoys figs picked straight from the tree), Kukla finds guilty pleasure in “Malcolm in the Middle”. Thoughtful about the future of art and technology, she embraces AI not as a threat but as a tool—one that, like any creative process, depends on careful training and intention.