Two Slovenians make it to Berlinale Talents
Berlin, 16 February - Film music composer Matija Strniša and film director and screenwriter Maja Prettner have been invited to take part in this year's Berlinale Talents Campus, as part of which 250 up-and-coming filmmakers from 81 countries will be developing their projects and networking.
Berlinale Talents' mission is to discover new film talents from around the globe. This year, as many as 3,000 applicants were vying to be selected.
For Strniša, who will be one of the 12 film music composers to take part, this will be the third appearance at Berlinale, after 2017 and 2016, according to label Desk Top Music.
Strniša has scored several films, including Meteorstrasse, a feature film which opened the German Film Perspective series at the Berlinale in 2016, and Ein Weg, which was screened as part of the same section in 2017.
He graduated in clarinet from the Ljubljana Academy of Music and finished a master's degree in film music writing at Babelsberg Film University in Potsdam in 2015.
An independent filmmaker, Prettner has shot several short and feature films after graduating in directing from the Ljubljana Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television.
In 2016, she made Home Sweet Home (Dom, ljubi dom), a feature-length documentary which depicts a story about four children who leave a socially unstable home to find refuge in a youth centre.
According to her Linkedin profile, the film, which has been screened at several festivals, won the best documentary award at the South East European Festival in Los Angeles.
Meanwhile, the Slovenian Film Centre will also take part in the Berlin International Film Festival, providing information to festival directors, distributors and journalists.
They will be able to learn first-hand about grants foreign filmmakers can get in Slovenia. Under Slovenian law, they are eligible to up to a 25% refund for all (post-)production costs spent in the country.
Festival goers will also be able to watch short animated Slovenian films featuring a popular hero Koyaa by Kolja Saksida.
Slovenian producers will be represented as co-producers of several films, including the acclaimed Balkan war drama, Men Don't Cry, by Bosnian director Alen Drljević.
Berlinale opened on Thursday and will feature 385 films from around the world in eleven festival days.
Nineteen films will be vying for the Golden Bear, the main prize.