STA, 7 November - The silver screen will reign supreme in the social life of Slovenia's capital over the next 12 days as the annual Ljubljana International Film festival (LIFFe) gets under way at Cankarjev Dom tonight.
The 29th LIFFe will open with the documentary Sing Me a Song, Miran Zupanič's portrait of Vlado Kreslin, the popular Slovenian singer-songwriter.
Ten films by up-and-coming directors will be in the running for the main award, the Kingfisher, to be conferred by an international judging panel.
Learn about all the cinemas in Ljubljana here
According to the festival's artistic director, Simon Popek, the ten films to be screened in the Perspectives section this year are very communicative, offering satirized takes on reality.
The cases in point include Woman at War by Benedikt Erlingsson, The Load by Ognjen Glavonić and Little White Lie by Tomas Alzamora.
The festival will see several Slovenian films, including Urša Menart's My Last Year as a Loser in the Perspectives section.
The closing film, Winter Flies is an award-winning road movie by Olmo Omerzu, the Slovenian director who lives and works in the Czech Republic.
The festival will pay homage to German director Christian Petzold, who will be in Ljubljana for the occasion.
The retrospective section will be dedicated to the Czech New Wave, coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the Prague Spring and the death of two key protagonists of the wave - Miloš Forman and Juraj Herz.
Keep up with the latest movies playing in the capital with our weekly What’s on in Ljubljana guides, while parents will be pleased to learn about Kinobalon, Kinodvor’s programme for children (including babies and toddlers)
The East by Northeast section will see films by directors from former Soviet republics, including Kazakhstan, Belarus and Kyrgyzstan.
The Avant-Premieres section will include The House that Jack Built, the latest film by Lars von Trier, and Utoya - July 22, Erika Poppe's single-take reconstruction of the killing spree carried out by right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik.
Also screened will be films by Jean-Luc Godard, Gaspar Noe, Luca Guadagnino, Kiril Serebrenikov, Yorgos Lanthimos, Jafar Panahi and Claire Denis.
Apart from the Kingfisher, several other awards will be given out at the closing ceremony on 17 November, including the audience's award, the award for best short film and the FIPRESCI award.
The films will be screened at several venues in Ljubljana as well as in Maribor, Novo Mesto and Celje until 18 November.
The LIFFe website, in English and with all the details of the screenings, can be found here
