LJUBLJANA: Slobodan Maksimović finished shooting his live-action feature Beanie / Kapa on 22 April 2021. This Slovenian/Luxembourg/Croatian/Slovak coproduction is the first Slovenian Christmas film and is expected to premiere in November 2021.

LJUBLJANA: Inhumanum: The Inhumanity of Man by Igor Zupe, the first Slovenian homicide documentary TV series, started shooting in Ljubljana on 12 April 2021. The series of eight 45-minute episodes is a Slovenian/Polish coproduction produced by Perfo.

LJUBLJANA: The American/Slovenian coproduction Infinite Storm directed by Małgorzata Szumowska and starring Naomi Watts, as well as the Slovenian minority coproduction Citadel, received support from the Slovenian cash rebate scheme. Both projects have been submitted by Slovenia’s Pakt Media.

LJUBLJANA: Slovenian screenwriter/director Sara Kern, who has been living in Australia for several years now, started shooting her debut feature Moja Vesna in Melbourne on 6 April 2021. This is the first Slovenian/Australian joint ever to be produced.

LJUBLJANA: Several film projects were interrupted because of the Coronavirus pandemic, most of them postponed to a later date, some of them to 2021; film theatres and multiplexes were more or less closed almost all year (completely closed for five months, operating with limited seating capacity for another five months). For the same reason the distribution and cinema releases were very limited, which resulted in a drop in cinema attendance of almost 80%.

LJUBLJANA: The shooting of the Slovenian feature Wake Me / Zbudi Me, directed by Marko Šantić and produced by Vertigo, began in Jesenice on 26 January 2021. Jure Henigman, one of the most acclaimed Slovenian actors of the younger generation, plays the main role in this Slovenian/Croatian/Serbian/French drama.

LJUBLJANA: Slovenian cinema admissions and total box office decreased by some 77% in 2020, compared with 2019 results. Admissions dropped to only 539,970 compared to some 2.45 m in 2019, and the total box office dropped to 2.887 m EUR compared to 12.6 m EUR in 2019 and 12.8 m in 2018.

LJUBLJANA: The Slovenian Government has released the approved funds for filmmakers in the final days of 2020 enabling the Slovenian Film Centre to execute all the delayed payments to the Slovenian producers, actors and other filmmakers by 31 December 2020.

TALLINN: Miroslav Mandić’s sixth feature Sanremo, a drama about aging, premieres in competition at the 24th Black Nights Film Festival, which runs through 29 November 2020. This Slovenian/Italian coproduction was filmed in Slovenia and Italy in the autumn of 2019.

LJUBLJANA: Slovenian arthouse cinemas, already struggling for survival from COVID closures and capacity restrictions, are now facing funding cuts of nearly half from the Slovenian Ministry of Culture.