I couldn’t draw you a map was developed as part of the Mitrovica Art Residency. Could you tell us more about the context in which it was made? Did the city itself inspire the film, or did the idea for a film about separation already exist?
The film was inspired both by the city and by my experience of being there at that particular moment in my life.
A Serbian friend told me about Mitrovica and about the political tensions surrounding the city. He mentioned that I could visit through an art residency, so I started researching the city. I became fascinated by its history and by all the layers that kept appearing the more I read: the history of former Yugoslavia, the Kosovo War…I felt I needed to go there.
Part of my work involves bringing together different worlds, territories and languages that, through cinema, can coexist in the same time and space. I remember mentioning this during the residency interview. I spoke about my interest in identity as something monstrous, something that can keep transforming itself, like a metamorphosis, and about its performative nature. I also said that I found it fascinating to travel to a country younger than myself and try to map it. I remember the selection committee smiling ironically and then inviting me to come.
Several months later, when I finally arrived in Mitrovica and spent time there, some of those ideas seemed to be temporarily suspended. At the same time, I had recently gone through a breakup. I had never intended to include that experience in the film, but looking back, it definitely shaped the way I emotionally navigated the territory.
The division of the city—between North and South, Serbs and Albanians—becomes like an echo chamber for the personal divisions you experience (identity, emotional, geographical). What were the challenges of establishing this connection?
Of course, I arrived with a few ideas of my own. Before ever going to Mitrovica, I imagined making a film based on mirrored images. I wanted to film the repetitions I expected to find on both sides of the city: a mosque and a church, monuments to medieval tsars and tributes to soldiers who died in 1999. Elements that contribute to the construction of a city. My idea was to edit these images playfully, without any narration. I also wanted to film the Trepča mine and other traces scattered throughout the territory.
Meanwhile, I was writing every day, as I always do, just for myself.
When I returned to Germany, I had to move out of Berlin, find a new home in a new city, continue dealing with the breakup, and edit the material in just a few days for a presentation at the residency. It was simply too much. During that time, while sharing some drafts with a friend, she asked me: “Why don’t you include your notes in the film?”
At first I resisted the idea, perhaps because there was a certain fatigue around the diary form, especially after the pandemic. Still, I wasn’t going to fool myself: it’s a form I love. In fact, when I was teaching film in Buenos Aires, the diary film was one of the subjects I taught. From Jonas Mekas, Chantal Akerman, Paula Gaitan and Ross McElwee to Andrés Di Tella and even Mariano Llinás, the list could go on.
When I reread my notes, I noticed all those recurring crossings, divisions and repetitions. That was when the structure of the film appeared. I assembled a first cut, almost vomiting it out.
I left that version untouched for several months.
Around the same time, I took a seminar on European Justice that included a trip to the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg. It was strange to sit through hearings that I barely understood and yet hear echoes of my experience in Mitrovica. Kosovo and Serbia both aspire to become part of the European Union. Suddenly many things that had felt abstract became tangible: the Court, the European Union, its 24 official languages, its wars, NATO. I kept writing during that period as well.
Later, while thinking about a project around justice for an exhibition, I returned to that first cut and shared it with my professor, Omer Fast. From there, we began a more surgical revision of the film, bringing more distance and precision to those repetitions and ruptures.
Your observations and questions appear directly on screen, in a mix of Spanish and English, typewritten and handwritten notes. Why this approach to writing?
Because of the context in which I was developing the project, I ended up working on the text in English. The reality, however, is that my original notes were mixed and mostly written in Spanish. When I looked at the edits, it felt strange to see everything written in perfect English when I speak it in a much more broken way. That’s when I decided to bring Spanish back into the film.
The handwritten text emerged through conversations and exchanged messages with my friends Joaquín Maito and Tatiana Mazú. Joaquín designed the title cards, and together they helped me think about other ways of introducing words into the film. It felt natural to carry something from the physical world onto the screen.
You combine several formats and image qualities, digital HD and Mini DV. Is this a way of embodying the two versions of the story?
The Mini DV wasn’t included in the first cut, and I wasn’t planning to use it. I had brought the camera with me, much like I bring a diary when I travel. Whenever I was too tired to go out with the larger camera and tripod, I would just take the little Mini DV camera with me. It was lighter and didn’t make my back hurt as much.
When I decided to continue working on the project, I didn’t want to edit it myself. I found it difficult to confront the material again. I remember being very sad around that time, and the breakup was still very present. Fortunately, Melisa Liebenthal joined the project as editor. I gave her the first cut and a hard drive containing all the footage.
When we met for the first time, we decided to start over. She had already watched all the material and had assembled a sequence of the premiere using only the Mini DV footage. She convinced me to include it because of its more intimate quality, and it eventually helped us understand the division we were constructing within the film.
Fragments of images and sounds gathered during your solitary walks take on an almost playful form, alongside the text and sound. How did you approach the editing?
The editing process was very much a dialogue with Melisa. After a few editing sessions, she asked if she could read my diary. Since she’s a friend, I had no problem transcribing all my notes. We always had the Word document open next to the editing timeline.
We had the script I had written, but underneath it there were pages of notes that never made it into the film, or that kept appearing and disappearing throughout different versions of the edit. The film was constantly moving between those layers.
I also think that some of the ideas I mentioned earlier contaminated this version of the film. There was a curiosity in those first days that felt much more playful. As I spent more time in Mitrovica, that playfulness gradually disappeared, but it remained embedded in the edit.
Starting with the title, I couldn’t draw you a map is also an address to someone from whom you recently separated; was the creative process a form of healing?
I don’t think so. I’m not sure we ever completely heal from certain things.
Beyond the breakup, moving to Europe also deepened other internal divisions and displacements that, at least in my experience, will never fully come together.
As for the title, it speaks more about an impossibility. The impossibility of synthesizing what is happening there, of speaking about division, of grasping Mitrovica as a whole.
Interviewed by Louise Martin-Papasian
