“Frankly, you don’t write a film with queer people in Macedonia, and expect it to get financed,” says Goran Stolevski, laughing in disbelief. “It was a crazy chain of circumstances that led to this one getting made.” Stolevski is talking to me about Housekeeping for Beginners, his third feature, and the third to be released in two years. A chaotic comedy about a gay man and gay woman who fake a romantic relationship, it’s riveting, moving, and wholly unlike his previous movies: You Won’t Be Alone was a sinister horror, while Of an Age resembled a teenage love story.

Born in Macedonia and raised in Australia, Stolevski is one of arthouse cinema’s newest, hottest names. He’s also a filmmaker in his late 30s who’s frustrated it took so long. “I wrote You Won’t Be Alone in 2016, Housekeeping for Beginners two months later, and another in between,” Stolevski informs me over coffee in Waterloo. “My husband was doing his postdoc in Bristol, and I was a very low-budget trophy wife. I was unemployed and had to fill my days somehow. By the time anyone was interested in reading my scripts, I had a catalogue of 10.”

It was in Bristol that Stolevski wrote two films set in Macedonia: one was Housekeeping for Beginners, the other about abortions. “I’ll be blunt,” he says. “I thought, ‘When I apply to Macedonia, I’ll apply with the abortions one, because it’s less controversial.’” Written more to satisfy himself, Housekeeping for Beginners was inspired by a photo Stolevski saw as a child in Melbourne of two gay men residing in a house with queer women. “I wanted to live there,” he explains. “But I also wanted it to be present-day, in Eastern Europe, because it’s more relevant to queer rights, and Macedonia was a no-brainer because I know the language.”

In the Macedonian city of Skopje, Dita (Anamaria Marinca) runs a safe house for queer runaways and outsiders, the cramped rooms teeming with arguments, laughter, and support. Dita’s residents include her girlfriend, Suada (Alina Serban), two of Suada’s children, and a cranky gay pal, Ali (Samson Selim). However, when Suada unexpectedly dies, it’s up to Dita to take over as a parent; in order to do so, she and Ali legally marry in order to fool homophobic authorities and fake a family. Dark screwball humour awaits: Suada’s eldest child tells the police she’s been kidnapped, which leads to Dita and Ali hiding anything “gay” from the house before an inspection.

As well as writing and directing his features, Stolevski edits them, too. The rhythm is crucial to Housekeeping for Beginners, a knotty drama that lands viewers right in the middle of a hectic home full of bickering, impassioned characters whose relationships take a bit of detective work to discern. While the dialogue feels loose and light, Stolevski stuns me with the revelation that his two lead actors are Romanian women who don’t speak Macedonian. “They had to learn it all phonetically,” he says. “It’s very scripted.”

While Stolevski hasn’t visited any safe houses in Macedonia, he grew up in Tetovo and knew he was gay from an early age. “There are queer people everywhere,” he says. “If you get kicked out of a home and don’t live in a capital city, you can deduce how it works. I’ve had people involved in queer households in Macedonia come up to me and say, ‘Which one did you go to for research?’ I was like, ‘Oh, I made it up.’ In terms of family dynamics in Macedonia, I know overcrowded houses. I know it intimately.”

The more you allow minority characters of every description to be arseholes if they want to be, they become more relatable

Stolevski set his first feature, You Won’t Be Alone, in Macedonia, albeit in the 19th century. Like Housekeeping for Beginners, he didn’t expect it to be funded. “It’s a story about witches, but it’s not a horror, it’s more a drama, and about feelings. And, by the way, it’s an esoteric dialogue no one speaks, but my grandparents did.” Set in the modern age, Of an Age involves an intense love affair between two teen boys. “None of them are autobiographical,” he says. “But they sum me up as much as possible, and the people around me.”

Before shooting You Won’t Be Alone, Stolevski had already directed 25 short films. One of them, 2017’s Would You Look at Her, won a major prize at Sundance and effectively launched his career. Still, Housekeeping for Beginners presented new challenges, such as winning the trust of the Macedonian locals during the shoot. As Stolevski moved to Australia at the age of 12, he speaks Macedonian without an accent and was perceived as a foreigner; he also needed to win over the Roma community.

“Roma people are wary of white people coming in with their cameras,” says Stolevski. “You can’t make a film that feels alive and real when the people on screen are resisting. The easiest way to win someone over is to genuinely care about how they feel. The challenge is also that most communities with limited socioeconomic circumstances tend to be quite homophobic, frankly. I grew up in one. I’m aware of these patterns. Macedonia in general is quite homophobic. Making a film with gay people and children in it is a tricky proposal. People don’t respond the way you want them to. It was convincing people to see me as a full person who has empathy and value as a human being. Yes, I am a gay guy, and your children are safe around me.”

On his trip to London, Stolevski is taking meeting after meeting, and already has a number of features planned. He expects his next two to be a “political satire” and a “gay story that’s present-day but touches on the past”, both from scripts he’s written. The filmmaker admits his life would be easier if he’d simply directed one of the big projects he’s been offered in the past. “They’re good on paper, but they’re not ones I connect to emotionally,” he says. “And they’re not ones where [a minority character] can be an arsehole. It’s very important for me to have the full spectrum of feelings at my disposal for each of my characters.”

It’s Stolevski’s observation that mainstream movies are suffering from the noble migrant stereotype. “I grew up as a migrant in Australia,” he says. “It’s like you have to be in this box of goodness in order to be accepted. And I’m like, ‘If Walter White gets to be an arsehole in Breaking Bad, then so do I. If he’s worth following for the story, so am I.’ The language they use to speak to each other [in Housekeeping for Beginners] is often quite vile, but this is what a family operates like, and this is what we’re all like. The more you allow minority characters of every description to be arseholes if they want to be, they become more relatable.”

Housekeeping for Beginners is available on digital platforms