FeKK SLO: The Rise of Animation

Together with the FeKK SLO winner Magical Castle is Here! Now by Ester Ivakič, Bezovšek’s film can be viewed as one of the peaks of the trend from four years ago. It was then that the Slovenian competition section saw a surge of (independent) experimental films. If the latter marked FeKK 2019 and 2020 was led by short fiction films, 2022 belongs to the dominion of another genre: animation. More than a third of the selection is animated and, more significantly, the animations were created under the wing of production studios of different provenience, academies, as well as independently. Three of them also boast a lively international festival presence. This year’s selection will therefore nicely display the richness of approaches and techniques animation offers to its creators in Slovenia.
The second, slightly less represented, yet somewhat expected, tendency is the experimental direction of some documentaries or of films concerned with the actual social events and/or portrayal of individuals. As with the trend of the animated documentary film, this field, too, offers fertile ground for exploring the potential of documentaristics.
One question of the FeKK SLO selection has always been what to do with films that came close to the competition programme and whose originality would be a pity to miss. Two years ago, the answer emerged in the form of the Second Wave section, which now even more so dismisses the status of an outcast child and becomes a section that started establishing its own rules.

The Second Wave ‘22 is thus divided into two parts. The first is dedicated to the generation zeitgeist in the broadest sense possible – by authors’ generation, generation-specific themes, or approaches brought about by the internet and other accessible technology. The second part focuses more on experimental and genre-fuelled hits headed by a few low-budget horror films. The aim is to finally acknowledge the unrestrained genre-induced films and filmmakers, who annually apply at FeKK, and, in sync with the current festival theme, to make at least a portion of the hidden life of things, or better, independent art, more visible.

The applications for the FeKK SLO competition programme have, as is their habit, broken the records. Quantity is no assurance for quality but it does raise its statistical probability. Following such logic, it should apply that out of 170 applications, 23 selected films offer several possibilities of some break-through or other.