The 26th Slovenian Week Festival, which will occupy its permanent location on the Slovenian coast during the first week of the week, this year’s edition brings four world premieres: new feature films by Nejc Gazvoda, Igor Šterko, Žiga Virac and Janez Burger.
In the competitive program of feature films, on which the eyes of the general public are usually most keenly focused, this year will be presented as many fourteen feature films. Half of them are documentaries, according to the director of the Slovenian Film Center Nataša Bučar a reflection of the SFC’s goals and investments in the development of documentary film.
A lull for an animated film, an explosion for a documentaryIn the field of feature films, Slovenian production offers a number of films comparable to the last few years, with the mentioned increase “a beautiful future is written” for documentaries, there are slightly fewer animated films this time, but an increase in studio films has been noticed, added the director of the FSF Bojan Labovic. They received 138 applications. In addition to the competition ones, the committee selected 39 films for the review section and seven films that will be shown in a special review program.
Among the documentaries, the portrait of the late Petr Musevski, the film, will surely attract a lot of attention A pen directed by Damjan Kozolet. Maja Prettner in the documentary Priestess follows the story of an evangelical priest who leaves her profession, Two steps from the Baltic to the Adriatic directed by Jan Mozetiča draws the cultural landscape of Lithuania, Poland, Hungary and the Slovenian-Italian coast at the beginning of the 20th century. The body Petre Seliškar’s portrayal of a long-term struggle with autoimmune diseases. He doesn’t think it will ever be over is an experimental documentary film by Tomaž Grom, LGBT_SLO_1984 Boris Petkovič’s document of the Slovenian LGBT movement. It stands at the crossroads of fiction and documentary film Through my eyesa film by Igor Vrtačnik, a portrait of Ven Pilon in Paris at the turn of the century.
Among the feature films I will find all four “world premieres” mentioned above. On October 3, the festival will officially open with Sterkiade Igor Šterka – an intimate portrait of the family of Jure Šterka, the first Slovenian to sail around the world alone. Labović chose Šterkijada for the opening because the film will be interesting to the widest audience due to its subject matter, and also because, due to its connection with the sea, it occupies a particularly symbolic place at the festival, which has its home in Portorož.
At the opening ceremony of the festival, the Milke and Metod Badjure award will be presented, which will be awarded to the director of photography for lifetime achievement in the field of filmmaking. Rado Likon.
A role model it’s after A trip and Duplicates the third feature film by Nejc Gazvoda; “a trip to elementary school years and youth, which seems more unusual with each passing year,” the director relived with young France Mandić in the lead role.
Žiga Virc is s To the last heroes created “a black comedy about a family that fights against an external enemy, but ends up at war with itself”. According to Virč, the film about the upheavals surrounding the demolition of the Partisan monument, which must be removed from the shopping center “an expression of my generation’s anger and helplessness at our nation’s obsession with the past”.
As the last world premiere, it’s still here Observation, which director and co-writer Janez Burger describes as a story about empathy. The enigmatic synopsis hints at the elements of a horror story: “The more a young paramedic tries to discover why she is receiving mysterious footage of a brutal crime she saw live on Facebook, the more it becomes clear to her that she herself participated in it.”
The range of feature films is rounded off by films Wake me up Marko Šantić, A husband without guilt Ivana Gergolet and the youth hit by Petar Bratuša Gaia’s world 2, which we could already see in regular distribution. Among the feature films this year, there is not a single film directed by a woman, but for this reason, as many as four female directors started shooting feature films this year, so we can expect their “wave” next year.
This year, the minority co-productions section counts only two titles: polega A safe place There is also an Italian-Slovenian co-production by Juraj Lerotić, who was already awarded with a kingfisher at last year’s Liff What a life!under which director Giuseppe Battiston is signed.
Among the 16 short films in the competition program, five will be documentaries, five animated and six feature films.
A year of anniversaries and farewellsThis year, the festival will celebrate several anniversaries: the 100th and 60th anniversary of the theaters in which Kinodvor and Slovenska kinoteka operate today, The 80th birthday of director Karpo Godina (with conversation and projection of Ivanišinov Car traveler) and last year’s centenary of the cameraman’s birth Ivan Marinček. They will also remember the theater and film giant Radka Poliča – Raca: they will show the Croatian film in which he played his last role, I only remember happy daysand hosted director Nevi Marasović in Portorož.
This year he receives the award “Friend of Slovenian Film”. Dragomir Zupancwhich is preparing Days of Slovenian Film in Belgrade.
This year, the expert jury for feature films consists of an actress Anuša Kodeljadirector Andrina Mračnikar and responsible editor of Ekran magazine Ana Sturmand the jury for short and study films is the creator of animated films Dušan Kastelicanthropologist and filmmaker Naško Križnar and producer and editor Vladimir Shojat.
The audience will also vote for their favorite film, as will the Society of Slovenian Film Publicists Fipresci, the Art Cinema Network of Slovenia and the Society of Slovenian Directors, which crowns “valuable film collaborators” with the Kosobrin Award.
The professional program will be introduced by a lecture by Spanish documentary film producer Marta Andreu, in this part of the festival a strategic plan for the development of the AV industry until 2030 will be presented. Veronika Zakonjšek announced a round table on sustainable practices in Slovenian film production.
The FSF will take place in two locations, in the Portorož Auditorium and the Monfort Exhibition Center. As they strive to present Slovenian films abroad, this time they invited the selectors of documentary festivals from the wider region as guests. Ticket prices are according to the FSF project manager Tjaše Smrekar kept at five euros, as well as the symbolic film euro, which also allows invited students of film academies to watch films.
Source: Rtvslo
