FeKK SLO: Competition programme

The year 2021 definitely marks historic for Slovenian short film – despite the political blockades for the film sector in the year before – and proves that the domestic short film scene is intensifying in form at the highest level and with great success: Sestre (Sisters) celebrated at Clermont-Ferrand, the biggest short film festival in the world, Zadnji dan patriarhata (The Last Day of the Patriarchy) by Olmo Omerzu was rolling at Indy Shorts in Indianapolis, Rok Biček’s Kazenski strel (Penalty) and Špela Čadež’s Steakhouse (which will be screened with a delay at FeKK 2022) have been selected for Locarno and Sarajevo, whereas Katarina Jazbec’s experimental documentary You Can’t Automate Me took part in the competition programme at the Rotterdam festival this year. Some of the films screened at last year’s FeKK are also paving the festival path of extreme success.

This year’s FEKK SLO competition programme presents a bouquet of films that showcase the heterogeneity and varied nuances of the short film milieu. The three sections present films that gained institutional support, as well as fully independent productions, student films from Slovenian (AGRFT, VŠU) and foreign academies, films by authors working abroad and films by foreign authors working in Slovenia.

Over the past years we may have complained that Slovenian short fiction film is enclosed in the purely subjective, where the social trait does not seem to exist. But films of this year’s competition reveal a broader social background through the details of a purely personal story, whether it is the echoes of housing policy, the eviction of NGOs, the burnout of the working class, which is not at peace even on a public holiday or the blending into the working environment, where the films unveil or unfold the area of solidarity…

This also enables some interesting experiments that expand the field of (conventional) cinematic expression, where, on the one hand, film incorporates the language of other visual media and thus expands the field of the cinematic: film as a website, a gif, a computer game, a montage of private archival footage, evoking a Tik Tok or Vimeo sensibility; on the other hand, there are also films that, in order to have an impact, require audience participation that goes beyond the mere cognitive participation of filling in narrative blanks.

We could see that some of the works expand or rework certain elements: either by unrealistic acting (which would give Stanislavski a stroke on the spot), or by combining animation and film in unusual ways, various animation techniques, mixing fiction and documentary… But they also serve us their own spins of current topics, such as gender and identity issues, references to the #metoo movement, exploring the formation of social bonds in patriarchy and, ultimately, parodies of these situations.

This year, we also have an expanded non-competitive Second Wave section. Last year this represented the materialisation of the edge that missed out on the competition programme, but continuously received the widest attention from the selectors, as in whether they should be selected or not.

In short, these are films that have always been seriously considered, even though they did not ultimately make it into the competition programme. But as they gained our attention at least at some point, either with the idea or a certain formal approach; we felt it not only worthwhile but also necessary to include them in the programme. After all, they contribute to widening the field of the idea of what a (short) film is and where it can go.

Well, if you want another (or mostly) sweet statistic: we received over 140 films, out of which we selected 20 for the FEKK SLO competition and 17 for the Second Wave – a short film harvest, so to speak.