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14. marec 2024

Slovenian film cycle in Italy with Petra Seliškar

The Cycle of Slovenian Films in Italy will experience its third edition on March 14, 2024 in the company of director Petra Seliškar. Her new documentary Body, which takes us into the secrets of the human body and the power of art and friendship, will be screened with Italian subtitles at 8 p.m. at the House of Film in Gorizia. The event at Kinoatelje will be realized in cooperation with the Petra Pan production company.

For two decades, the director followed her friend Urška with her camera, who bravely copes with rare autoimmune diseases. She guides viewers through a sensitive story about life and the inner world "between dreams, reality and the damage caused by illness and drugs." The documentary filmmaker, recipient of the 2008 Darko Bratina Award, interweaves in the film a mixture of intimate conversations, personal archives and impressionistic images, revealing deep human experience. Body, which is also this year's winner of the prize for the best documentary film at the Slovenian Film Festival, is not only a story about illness, but about the power of the human spirit.

After the screening, the audience will be able to meet director Petra Seliškar.

With this event at Kinoatelje, we are marking this year's 25th anniversary of the awarding of the Darko Bratina award at the Tribute to a Vision festival. Together with our guests, we are celebrating a quarter of a century of the award, which carries a message about the transformative, humanistic and poetic power of film images.

"Let's go back to 2007, which was full of trips around the world for our newly formed family. My first feature film Grandmothers of the Revolution was a festival success and I just gave birth to my daughter Terra. The Tribute to a Vision festival remains an important moment in my life for many reasons; first of all because I returned to Slovenia after many years and this was the first award in Slovenia that I received, well, technically in Italy. For me, it's a prize with a special weight, even physically, because I remember it being heavy. It is even heavier because it bears the name of Darko Bratina. At that time, I remember that Nadja Velušček told me about him and the beginnings of Kinoatelje, I was moved by the story of how they physically started showing Slovenian films across the border between Italy and Slovenia - a film screen between two cultures that were estranged because of the war. I still think this is visionary, a unique way of communication and a creative way that could be applied across many borders. This idea is supported by Darko Bratina, who later dealt with minority politics and achieved many things. Money from the fund was handed over to us by his daughters, who continue his mission," said the director.

The film cycle is produced in cooperation with the Slovenian Film Center, the House of Film and the Government Office for Slovenians Abroad and Around the World, and is part of the official program of the European Capital of Culture GO! 2025.

We set about creating the film cycle in the spirit of a landmark retrospective entitled Cinema Sloveno 1946-1981 Slovenian film, when in 1981 Slovenian cinematography was presented to the Italian public for the first time in Gorizia, which until then had only been shown abroad as part of Yugoslav cinema. "Gorizia has become an observatory of Slovenian film and a changing society," said Aleš Doktorič, then president of Kinoatelje, on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the event. Let this continue to be a challenge and a call to our cross-border cinephile community.

It is no longer a secret when the cross-border film festival Tribute to a Vision will come to life again! In 2024, we will meet between October 8 and 13 and together celebrate the 25th anniversary of the awarding of the Darko Bratina award. In the year of the European Capital of Culture GO! 2025, we will get to know the socially engaged cinematography of recognizable and young authors between October 7 and 12. We are excited to create the festival program and can't wait to share it with you.