Film director Franci Slak died

He was a lecturer at the Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television in Ljubljana since 1980. Slak was presented the Metod Badjura Award three times, in 1981, 1985 and 1987, and in 1988 he received the Prešeren Award.

Among other, he directed full-length feature films When I Close My Eyes, which was the first Slovenian candidate for the Academy Award; the black drama about Inform biro The Felons, and films Bumpstone, Eva and The Time of Crisis. The Felons were part of the competition programme of the Berlin Film festival.

In the last fifteen years his work was mostly connected to TV Slovenia: he made a five-part television series about France Prešeren, broadcasted upon 200th anniversary of the poet’s birth. The 2003 full-length feature Portrait of the Poet with a Double is a cinematographical version of the same project.

As producer he collaborated at the films Outsider directed by Andrej Košak (1996) and The Blind Spot by Hanna A. W. Slak (2002).

We was born in 1953 in Krško and primarily studied direction in Ljubljana and then in Lodz in Poland, where he graduated in 1978. After making amateur films, he began his professional way with short documentary and experimental films; he was also the author of several documentary TV portraits, among them the one of Jože Pučnik, Marko Pogačnik, Drago Jančar, and Friderik Baraga.

He gave lectures in film editing at the Ljubljana Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television since 1980 and for some years he was also the Principal of the Department of Television and Film there.
Just before he took leave, he made a television film On Earth as It Is in Heaven, currently still in post-production.