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Nerina Kocjančič • Slovenian F.F.

"Journey across the desert"

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- A close look at domestic production with the Head of Promotion and Sales manager of the Slovenian Film Fund

Nerina Kocjancic is right at home at the Trieste Film Festival, where we met up with her. For years the ambassador of Slovenian cinema, she was at the event with six films, two in each section: feature films (Estrellita [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Danijel Hočevar
interview: Metod Pevec
interview: Nerina Kocjančič
film profile
]
and Installation of Love by Maja Weiss), shorts (On the Sunny Side of the Alps by Janez Burger and Marko Santic’s The Hole) and documentaries (Minor Apocalypse by Alvaro Petricig and The Children from Petricek Hill by Miran Zupanic). However, do not be deceived by the bulk of titles: in Ljubljana, times are hard for filmmaking.

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Cineuropa: What is the situation of Slovenian cinema?
Nerina Kocjancic: This year is not going to be a good year, at least from the point of view of quantity. Not a single film was made last year. Estrellita and Installation of Love were produced in 2006, then nothing. No feature films, no shorts. There is a black hole in Slovenian production, due above all by the centre-right government that came to power in 2005, interfered overbearingly in the decisions on cinema and thwarted the success of the previous decade.

Often at festivals, when we would hear people speaking of a Slovenian nouvelle vague…
Production had reached five films per year, which often participated and won awards at major festivals worldwide, from Venice to Berlin to Rotterdam. Never at Cannes, however, for which public opinion always berated us. The government ha used this pretext to impose changes in a system that was working well, and which would have shortly been able to increase the positive trend.

After the interruption of 2007, what prospects are there for the new year?
At the end of last year, several projects were scheduled to into production. The first feature will be Prehod, written by a historical figure of our cinema, Franci Slak, who was also supposed to direct but he died last October. Aatalante, which is producing the film, handed the project over to Boris Palcic, who was Slak’s assistant. Also going into production will be the new film by Damjan Kozole, Slovenka.

In the meantime, however, Slovenia will be at the upcoming Rotterdam and Berlin festivals…
The Rotterdam film L... Like Love [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
was also produced in 2006. It’s the feature debut of Janja Glogovac, co-produced by Slovenia with the Czech Republic, Austria and Serbia. Then in another section we have Kozole’s Forever. It’s a film shot in two rooms, which did not receive any public funds, and was thus entirely self-financed by the director and producer Danijel Hocevar, who produced Estrellita and many successful Slovenian films.

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