Georgian director Ana Urushadze (“Scary Mother”), whose Rotterdam prizewinner “Supporting Role” plays in competition this week at the Sarajevo Film Festival, is prepping her third feature film.
“Fear of Butterflies” follows a young woman on the cusp of 30 who is “going through some bizarre things, mentally and physically,” Urushadze told Variety. The director described the film, which explores the mordant consequences of a woman “not accepting her body,” as a “detective story with a little bit of mysticism and a touch of body horror.”
The title riffs on Urushadze’s own “severe fear” of the winged insects, which she has harbored from an early age. Recently, she explained, she tried to tackle her phobia with the help of a psychologist friend, who posited the question: If a butterfly was a human being, what would it be like?
“I was like, ‘What kind of question is this?’” the director said, laughing. “But then, weirdly, I knew the answer. I told him a butterfly would be a very sick person, an invalid. Either very ill or handicapped. And he said, ‘That’s it. It’s your fear to be like that.’”
It was an ah-ha moment for the director, an avowed hypochondriac. “Something clicked,” she said — although that hasn’t helped to conquer her phobia.
