BC grandmother turns indie filmmaker with award-winning love story

When Goldie Smitlener set out to make her first feature film at the age of 69, she didn't let lack of experience or money stop her. She knew she had a great story -- one she had always believed was screaming to be made into a movie.

Smitlener was just 14 and living in Yugoslavia when she first read Janko Matko's "Moć zemlje", or "The Power of Soil", a story of star-crossed lovers, set in feudal Croatia. She couldn't have known then that it would take more than fifty years -- and Smitlener herself adapting it for the screen -- for it to finally be made into a film.

That film, "Stolen Path", is now racking up international awards at independent film festivals -- despite the fact that the producer and writer's only previous involvement in the film industry was as a member of the audience.

In fact, Smitlener confesses to As it Happens host Carol Off, she didn't even know how to use a camera when filming started. "I still don't," she says.

I wanted to tell people of my generation that if you have a dream, follow it up. Things will come into place. Don't wait until the conditions are right, because they will never be right.- Goldie Smitlener

"I had a lot of help...I had to learn everything because I didn't know anything," she explains. "I did have people, I did have a cameraman, I did have a director, people who knew the trade. And I did a lot of work myself, to cut down on time, on expenses. I devoted two years of my life to that movie."

Smitlener tells Carol the initial plan was to shoot on location in Croatia. But in the end, most of the film was shot in Canada.

"Not knowing much about how things are supposed to be done, it didn't portray the feelings, the beauty that was this film, or this book was supposed to be. So we had to reshoot a lot of it in Vancouver."

Smitlener says she discovered a kindred spirit in the film's director, John Banovich, whose father hails from Croatia.

"He said to me he know's the book. His grandmother used to read the book to him. So I found a common ground," she explains.

And when it came to casting the film's heroine -- an aristocrat who falls in love with a peasant -- the production became a family affair. Smitlener's own granddaughter Daniela shoulders the film's lead role, despite never having acted before.

"I spoke to Daniela, and she agreed to play the lead role, with a condition: that if I think she's not good enough, that I will replace her," says Smitlener. "I knew she would be good. Because she did it with a heart, and with a love. And she's very natural."

To date, the film has won a handful of awards, including Best Canadian Feature at the Canada Independent Film Festival in Montreal, and for Daniela, the Best Actress Award at the Toronto World International Film Festival.

But for Smitlener, the biggest reward is the realization of a lifelong dream.

"I wanted to tell people of my generation that if you have a dream, follow it up. Things will come into place. Don't wait until the conditions are right, because they will never be right."