Short Film The Wedding Competes in Locarno

09. August 2006

In this year’s 59th Locarno International Film Festival which takes place from 2nd to 12th August, Slovenian short films are in the limelight.

Twenty-eight short films were included into the programme Leopards of Tomorrow, among them the Slovenian short flm The Wedding by the director Petar Pašiæ.

The competition programme of the short film has two parts; the competition programme of the Swiss short production and the competition programme of the short production that includes countries ‘East of the Mediterranean’. The East of the Mediterranean starts in Slovenia, journeys through the Balkans and ends in Northern Africa.

Before that Petar Pašiæ has made the short film The Last Wish (2003), and both films were produced by Arkadena and co-financed by the Slovenian Film Fund – a Public Fund. On the 5th August in Locarno The Wedding will see its world premiere, in Slovenia it will be screened in the Festival of Slovenian Film that will take place in Portorož from 14th to 17th September.

The Wedding is a film about an outburst of feelings at a wedding in a hunting lodge.

Besides the competition programme a retrospective of the short production from the countries East of the Mediterranean is as well taking place. Among 36 short films, shot in the last decade, three Slovenian short films made it into the programme: Hop, Skip& Jump, the winner of the Berlin International Festival Panorama in 2000, (A)torsion, the winner of the Golden Bear in 2003, and The Heart is a Piece of Meat that was in competition of the Venice International Film Festival in 2004.

One of the jury for the Leopards of Tomorrow members is the Slovenian director Jan Cvitkovič. His presence was honoured by a special screening of his film Gravehopping.

The Latvian film Kilnieks (The Hostage) by the director Laila Pakalnina is in the competition programme Filmmakers of the Present. The film was made in Latvian-Estonian-Slovenian co-production. From Slovenia Igor Pediček from the production studio Casablanca cooperated.

The film tells a story about the hijacked plane that lands in Riga and how the ten-year-old becomes a voluntary hostage. The Slovenian actor Branko Završan plays the role of the hijacker.