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About the festival

Welcome to the Cross-Border Film Festival Tribute to a Vision!

The central program of the Tribute to a Vision festival features a multi-day cross-border event traditionally held in October in the twin cities of Gorizia and Nova Gorica. Despite the geographical proximity of these cities, their cultural diversity and richness are distinct, and we aim to preserve this through the festival, which creates opportunities for direct dialogue and collaboration among cultural institutions, filmmakers, and audiences.

Since its inception, the festival has continually evolved while remaining true to the belief that film and audiovisual culture are excellent mediums for understanding and exploring society and its changes over time. It also offers a chance to bring different cultures closer together, whether they are from the immediate vicinity or more distant places. This vision also inspired sociologist, film critic, and Italian Senator Darko Bratina, after whom the main award of the festival, organized under the auspices of Kinoatelje, is named.

Our guiding principle remains unchanged: to foster and develop an open, challenging, and innovative cross-border film landscape in collaboration with numerous partners. We invite visionaries, critical thinkers, and creative creators who are not afraid to experiment and see film as an excellent tool for understanding society. With its long-standing commitment to promoting cross-border and intercultural cooperation, the festival is part of the main program of the European Capital of Culture GO! Borderless 2025.

The festival consists of the following sections:

  • Darko Bratina Award: Since 1999, Kinoatelje has awarded the Darko Bratina Award to a filmmaker who offers viewers a chance to reflect on and analyze the society we live in through the medium of film. The current awardee presents their works in a retrospective and shares their vision in a masterclass.

  • First Crossings: Launched in 2018, this program is designed as a platform for developing new film languages, primarily focusing on works by young filmmakers at the beginning of their creative journey, and is dedicated to the short film format. Student films selected for the competition programme compete for a €500 award.

  • New Visions: Bold, unconventional works ahead of their time, out of joint. Filmmakers who expand the possibilities of cinematic vision, pushing beyond established forms to shape the cinema of the future.

  • CinemaEye: This program focuses on the intersections of film, history, memory and archive: hybrid forms and works that explore film archives, write history through film, and reflect on what the moving image represents today.

  • Excursion: A selection of films from the festival’s network of partners, offering each year an exploration of different territories and cultural realities with which we collaborate and engage in ongoing dialogue.

  • At the center of margins: An exploration into the themes of marginality and cultural exception embodied by independent and archival cinema. This year, the focus is dedicated in particular to the distribution of works that film archives and other exceptionally courageous organizations are putting back into circulation today.

  • Extra Program: A professional and accompanying program that includes various audiovisual installations, exhibitions, performances, and concerts created in collaboration with local artists and institutions.

Our activities are geared toward cross-border and intercultural cooperation and the crossing of both physical and mental borders throughout the year, not just during the festival. We pay special attention to working with young people, with the Kinomagnet program offering special film experiences enriched with educational content in the fields of film and art for preschool children, pupils, and students.