The Resilience of Slovenian Cinema and Its Global Stars

By the ULTIMATE Ljubljana Editorial Team

The socialist era, Triglav Film and the pioneers (1945–1990)

After the Second World War, film-making in Slovenia was organised in state companies, led by Triglav Film, founded in Ljubljana in 1946, and later Viba Film. Early films told the story of the partisan resistance, in which Slovenia’s mountains and forests played a central part.

Slovenian directors soon moved beyond the formula to an atmospheric, auteur style, and by the 1960s and 1970s their cinema stood for experiment, psychological depth and bold social critique of patriarchy and bureaucracy alike.

Ljubljana on film →   Slovenian Cinematheque →

The modern and independent era (1990s–present)

Independence, reached peacefully in 1991, brought a creative renaissance as well as hard economic adjustments. Film-makers turned to intimate human dramas, spare urban stories and sharp social commentary.

The Slovenian Film Centre (SFC) built a modern industry that thrives on European co-production, and Slovenian films are now selected and rewarded at festivals such as Venice, Locarno and the Berlinale.

Must-watch films: the foundational classics

To understand the country’s cinematic lens, start with the post-war classics and the popular favourites, then the films of today.

• On Our Own Land (Na svoji zemlji, 1948): France Štiglic’s landmark, the first Slovenian sound feature film, follows a village through the Second World War, and competed at Cannes in 1949.
• Valley of Peace (Dolina miru, 1956): Štiglic’s moving anti-war drama follows two children who flee a bombed town and the American airman who shelters them; John Kitzmiller won the best actor award at Cannes.
• Don’t Cry, Peter (Ne joči, Peter, 1964): František Čap’s much-loved adventure comedy mixes partisan action with warm, light-hearted moments.
• Real Pests (To so gadi, 1977): Jože Bevc’s comedy is one of the great popular favourites of Slovenian cinema, and its lines are still quoted today.

Must-watch films: the contemporary masters

• Idle Running (V leru, 1999): Janez Burger’s acclaimed, minimalist black-and-white comedy caught the drift and malaise of a post-socialist generation, and became a cult film.
• Class Enemy (Razredni sovražnik, 2013): Rok Biček’s tense first feature sets a strict new German teacher against his students after a tragedy, and won the FEDEORA award for best film at Venice Critics’ Week.
• Consequences (Posledice, 2018): Darko Štante’s raw drama of masculinity and hidden sexuality in a youth detention centre premiered in Toronto to international praise.

The iconic domestic film stars

The Ljubljana stage and Slovenian cinema have produced actors of great precision, vulnerability and comic timing.

• Štefka Drolc (1923–2018): one of the great ladies of Slovenian stage and screen, who made her film debut in On Our Own Land and brought depth and dignity to classics such as The Blossoms in Autumn.
• Radko Polič: known to all as “Rac”, an actor of fierce intensity and magnetic presence across the cinema of the former Yugoslavia.
• Milena Zupančič: a screen icon whose range defined a generation, unforgettable as Meta in the romantic classic The Blossoms in Autumn (Cvetje v jeseni, 1973).
• Boris Cavazza: charismatic and powerful, at ease in both demanding art-house roles and popular films, and a lasting cultural figure.
• Jernej Šugman (1968–2017): a master of character acting and a powerhouse of the theatre, loved for his physical comedy and tragic depth alike, by theatre-goers and television audiences.
• Maruša Majer: one of the most acclaimed actresses of the new generation, named a European Shooting Star at the Berlinale in 2017 for her lead in Ivan.

The Festival of Slovenian Film, Portorož

Slovenia’s great annual celebration of cinema is the Festival of Slovenian Film (Festival slovenskega filma), held every autumn in the seaside town of Portorož.

It is the national showcase of the year’s features, documentaries and shorts, and its awards, the Vesna, named after the much-loved 1953 comedy Vesna, are given by juries of film professionals from Slovenia and the region. It is also where young film-makers meet producers and distributors.

Our advice: pair the festival with a few days on the coast, in Piran and Portorož, and see the year’s new Slovenian films alongside the people who made them.

Piran and the coast: our guide →   The coast: the back story →   LIFFe, Ljubljana →

Hidden on the silver screen: international productions filmed in Slovenia

With Alpine peaks, emerald rivers, karst caves and a Venetian-style coast all within easy reach of one another, Slovenia has become a favourite location for international film and television. The Slovenian Film Centre supports foreign productions with a cash rebate of 25 per cent of eligible spending, and the country has stood in for everything from Narnia to the Continent of The Witcher.

Our advice: many of these places are on our day trips from Ljubljana, so you can stand where the cameras stood in a single long weekend, from the Soča valley to Predjama and the coast.

• The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (2008), the Soča valley near Bovec: Andrew Adamson filmed most of the film in New Zealand, but chose the emerald Soča, where it meets the Gljun stream, for the Battle of Beruna and the destruction of the Telmarine bridge.
• The Union (2024), Piran: Netflix’s action comedy with Mark Wahlberg and Halle Berry was the largest foreign film project ever made in Slovenia, with some €10 million spent here, and most of the Slovenian shoot took place in Piran’s red-roofed streets.
• Armour of God (1986), Predjama Castle: long before the streaming crews arrived, Jackie Chan filmed parts of his action adventure at the cliff-face castle; other scenes were shot elsewhere in what was then Yugoslavia and across Europe.
• The Witcher (season 3), Predjama Castle, the Nanos plateau and Kranjska Gora: Netflix brought Henry Cavill and the cast to Slovenia in 2022 to film at the cave castle, on the high Nanos plateau and around Kranjska Gora.
• The Wheel of Time (season 1), Rakov Škocjan and Bovec: Amazon’s fantasy series, with Rosamund Pike, filmed the little stone bridge of its opening episode in the karst valley of Rakov Škocjan, and mountain and river scenes around Bovec and the Soča.
• No Man’s Land (2001), Slovenia: Danis Tanović’s Oscar-winning anti-war film, set in a single trench in Bosnia, was a Slovenian co-production and was filmed here, with the shoot ending in August 2000.
• Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (1990), Brežice Castle: Tom Stoppard directed his own play, with Gary Oldman and Tim Roth; the frescoed Knights’ Hall of Brežice Castle was among its interiors, with more filming around Zagreb, and it won the Golden Lion in Venice.
• Infinite Storm (2022), Krvavec and Velika Planina: Małgorzata Szumowska’s survival drama stars Naomi Watts as a hiker caught in a blizzard on Mount Washington in New Hampshire. To recreate its sub-zero conditions and deep snow, the entire Hollywood production was filmed across the high-altitude peaks of Slovenia’s Kamnik–Savinja Alps.

The Soča valley and Bovec →   Piran and the coast →   Predjama Castle →   Kranjska Gora →   Krvavec →   Velika Planina →   Bosnian cinema and No Man’s Land →   Slovenia as a film destination (official) →

The Hollywood diaspora

Actors and thinkers of Slovenian birth and heritage have left a lasting mark on Hollywood and world film culture.

• Željko Ivanek: born in Ljubljana and raised in the United States, one of the most respected character actors in American film and television, who won an Emmy for Damages and appeared in Argo, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and The Bourne Legacy.
• Audrey Totter (1917–2013): the daughter of a Slovenian-born father and a Swedish-American mother, one of the great femmes fatales of 1940s film noir, in Lady in the Lake for MGM and The Set-Up.
• Slavoj Žižek: the Ljubljana-born philosopher who became a star of film theory, writing and presenting The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema (2006) and The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology (2012), both directed by Sophie Fiennes.

A city cinema of 1923 and films in the castle: how Ljubljana goes to the movies →   Balkan Cinema: our long read on the whole region →

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