At this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Slovenians had every right to be proud because war drama by France Štiglic Valley of Peace was part of the prestigious selection 'Cannes Classics' which is reserved for restored film classics. Even though the catalogue clumsily listed Štiglic as a Croatian author (nationalite croate), this was a great achievement for the Slovenian film. Therefore it is somewhat unusual that out of all post-Yugoslav countries only Slovenia has never had a relevant program of its films in our (art) film theatres. Never say never though. The situation is not any better when it comes to the distribution of Slovenian films, and so in the last few years only Moderndorfer’s depressive Inferno was shown in our multiplex film theaters, even though it does not really belong there. To make matters even more absurd, the fact that Judita Franković appeared in Petkovič’s feel-good film The Beat of Love (Utrip ljubezni) as the Croatian version of Vanessa Mae living in Ljubljana, who, after a crossover appearance in a club starts an affair with a local hip-hop singer and “Čefur” (derogatory term for an inhabitant of Slovenia originating from other regions of former Yugoslavia, or their descendant), did not attract Croatian film distributors. 

The viral hip-hop absurdity of the rhyme 'What you can? What you can all right!' echoes also in the newer film by Jan Cvitkovič Šiška Deluxe, which marked the author’s sudden shift to comedy. After the 'total film' without words or music (Arheo) he took a turn towards 'total comedy'. He used a stream of words and music, at times reminiscent of a musical, and a heap of situational gags. Since in 2000, Miha Hočevar, fuck it, did not manage to bring about a real crowd-pleaser formula with his comedy about a group of naïve losers, which was simply and shortly entitled Fuck it, sixteen years later Cvitkovič’s story about three old punk rockers who decide to open a pizza restaurant in an old dusty sewing room in Ljubljana’s neighborhood Šiška raided the Slovenian box offices. Even though his comedy has moments that remind the viewer of a badly told joke, there are also some hilarious scenes (such as when Žiga puts his daughter to sleep with the 'Oi!' anthem and when he takes a swan in a three-wheel truck to a photoshoot with “Leda”) and it tries to continue what Mike Leigh did in his early phase when he made films such as Life Is Sweet. What Leigh’s group of losers crushed by Margaret Thatcher’s neoliberal politics tried to do by opening a deluxe French restaurant, Cvitkovič’s group of losers, whose blood keeps getting sucked by the same politics that is now embodied in the financial jihadists, tried to accomplish by opening a “deluxe” pizza restaurant.

Together with Class Enemy by Rok Biček, which is another story about bullying in school and is reminiscent of Cantet’s The Class and Vučković’s Panama, this program includes two great Slovenian documentaries. The anti-globalist piece Fight for (Borba za) directed by Siniša Gačić follows the protests of the members of the Occupy movement that took place a month after the occupation of Wall Street on a square in front of the stock exchange in Ljubljana. The number of protesters in Ljubljana proves how uninterested and passive their Croatian (film) colleagues were at the time, so as not to disturb the peaceful sleep of the stock brokers.

Documentary drama Dad by Vlado Škafar, follows a bucolic afternoon of a boy and his father. They catch fish, play and get to know each other because after the divorce the son is closer to his mother. The father is surprised by his son’s lucidity and seriousness in this domestic archive of quotes reminiscent of a scrapbook. Angels, best players in the world, holding your heart, lyrics, poetics, meditation, philosophy. However, what at a first glance seems as a short idyllic meeting of a father and his son in the natural paradise in Prekmurje area, in fact hides much heavier connotations. Namely, the father has been fired from his job in a textile factory (case 'Mura'), and after the paradise we suddenly move to hell (scene of the strike). Therefore, Dad leads probably the most emotional dialogue with Gačić’s film due to what happened to Škafar’s hero in the time of precarity and lay offs and it might have been one of the reasons for the occupation of the Ljubljana stock exchange.

Part of the program is the disturbing documentary by Maja Weiss Banditenkinder, which deals with the tragic destiny of 650 children from Celje who were forcefully taken from their parents in 1945 by the Nazis and put in special camps. Afterwards, they were adopted by German families. Famous writer Daša Drndić dealt with the similar topic of “stolen children”, know also as Lebensborn, in her novel Sonnenschein. The director of the documentary take a similar approach as Werner Herzog who in his films does not interview people but rather speaks to them. Even though the topics they speak about may be difficult and painful. What remains are the gruesome photographs as sad testimonies of the horrific past.   

Matevž Luzar (Good to Go) made sure that not everything is so dark. In his film he tells a heartwarming story about a retired man who rediscovers life after joining a computer class and meeting Mrs Melita, portrayed by the indestructible Milena Zupančič, the great dame of Slovenian film. There is some damned symbolism in the fact that in Mirković’s film Noćni brodovi, which sails a similar path, Mr Jakov was portrayed by Radko Polič. Good to Go. (Dragan Rubeša)