20 May The programmes of the 20th Kino Otok Festival and PRO Otok have been revealed!
This year’s 20th International Film Festival Kino Otok – Isola Cinema is just around the corner, with the main festival action taking place in Isola from 5 to 9 June 2024. In May and June, cinema screenings and meetings with filmmakers will also take place in the Slovenian Cinematheque and Kinodvor in Ljubljana, as well as in art cinemas in Cerknica, Idrija, Sežana and Tolmin. The festival remains non-competitive, genuinely dedicated to auteur cinema and the development of film culture. More than 100 feature films and short films will be screened, many of them in the presence of filmmakers. The entire festival programme and guests are published on the kinootok.org website, and we invite you to apply for PRO accreditation.
Invitation to PRO Otok: this year’s focus is on found footage film and the green transition
Once again this year, PRO Otok will take place at Kino Otoku in Izola, a programme for film professionals and all others interested in the journey of film from idea to screen and beyond.
Thursday, 6 June
PRO Otok, in collaboration with Motovila/CED Slovenia, starts with a presentation and workshop Green Transition in Culture: A Focus on Young Audiences (10.00-13.00), continuing our discussion on sustainable environmental practices in culture and film from the past three years. The main guest of the event and workshop tutor will be Claudia Ziegenfuß from the Berlin-based NGO Kijufi (Germany), which coordinates the development of a Sustainability and Social Awareness Charter for young film audiences within the Young4Film network of European film festivals. Free entry, pre-registration required by 3 June via the online form.
Friday, 7 June
The Art Cinema Association of Slovenia (AKMS) will hold a public meeting at the Manzioli Palace from 10.00 to 15.00.
The first part of the programme dedicated to found footage film and the creative use of archival material, Found Image: the Premio Cesare Zavattini Short Film Programme, and a presentation of the UnArchive Festival and the Audiovisual Archive of the Workers’ and Democratic Movement (Aamod) with guest Gabriele Ragonesi, will take place at the Art Cinema Odeon between 13.00 and 15.00.
From 16.00 to 18.30, Odeon will host Found Image: a programme of short films and panel discussion with found footage filmmakers. The only common feature of old images that become new films is precisely reinterpretation – the view of the filmmaker, who gives new meanings and effects to the images from their new circumstances. The filmmakers of the films in the festival programme will take part in a discussion on the creative issues of using found images.
Saturday, 8 June
From 15:00 to 16:30, the Manzioli Palace will host a presentation as part of this year’s intensive half-year Short Scene workshop, which includes learning about the theory and practice of the screenwriting craft, developing an idea and writing a script for a short film. Guests Matjaž Ivanišin and Nika Jurman will present case studies of their short films This is How Summer Ended (Matjaž Ivanišin, Slovenia, Hungary, Italy, 2022) and Borbike (Nika Jurman, Slovenia, 2022), followed by a moderated discussion. Since last year, Short Scene has been organised under the auspices of the Slovenian Directors’ Association in cooperation with the Slovenian Film Centre and in partnership with KRAKEN, the Association for the Promotion of Short Film.
From 18.00 to 20.30 at Art Kino Odeon, we will close PRO Otok in the company of the world-renowned master of the found image, who returns to Kino Otok with his latest striking short films. Found Image: a programme of short films and a masterclass by Bill Morrison will bring the experience of the American independent filmmaker, who usually creates his films from found footage and adds a new soundtrack to his films. His experimental work often explores the aesthetic and narrative effects of the deterioration of analogue film material. We will also see Morrison’s most recent acclaimed film, Incident (2023), which is perhaps uncharacteristic of his expression, as it consists of footage from street surveillance cameras and body cameras worn by American cops.
Incident (Bill, Morrison, 2023)
Programme and guests of the 20th Kino Otok Festival in Izola and elsewhere
The 20th edition of the festival will feature new films by filmmakers who have regularly enriched the festival programme for two decades: Essential Truths of the Lake (2023) by Lav Diaz, Eureka (2023) by Lisandro Alonso, Black Tea (2024) by Abderrahmane Sissako, While the Green Grass Grows (2024) by Peter Mettler, Dahomey (2024) by Mati Diop, El Shatt – A Plan for Utopia (2023) by Ivan Ramljak, The Golden Thread (2022) by Nishthe Jain and a programme of recent short films by Bill Morrisson. The programme will also be enriched by films by filmmakers who reveal new, innovative cinematic languages, such as Emilia Gašić’s 78 days (78 dana, 2024), Tatiana Huezo’s Echo (El Eco, 2023), Oscar Alegría’s Zinzindurrunkarratz (Zinzindurrunkarratz, 2023), and Bas Devoz’s Here. Historical classics by Ildikó Enyedi, Tawfik Saleh, Govindan Aravindan and Kira Muratova, whose retrospective of films will be screened as a part of Otok in Ljubljana, at the Slovenian Cinematheque and Kinodvor in the autumn, will not be missed. Since every city can be an Island, a Cinema Island, the selection of this year’s film programme will be screened in May and June in Ljubljana (Slovenian Cinematheque, Kinodvor), Cerknica, Idrija, Sežana and Tolmin (art cinemas, members of the Art Cinema Association of Slovenia), in cooperation with our partners.
Dahomey (Mati Diop, 2024)
The full festival programme is available on the website kinootok.org. The festival programme booklet is available here.
The PRO accreditation application form is available here. All ticket information is available here, pre-sale of festival tickets and discounted ticket sales: mojekarte.si, at the physical sales points of mojekarte.si all over Slovenia and in Kinodvor. The festival box office at the Art Cinema Odeon in Izola will be open from 3 June.
Programme presentations of the 20th Kino Otok in Ljubljana and Izola
The festival team will present the programme of the 20th Kino Otok live on 22 May 2024 at 13:00 in Kinodvor in Ljubljana and on 23 May 2024 at 11:00 in the Art cinema Odeon in Izola. You are cordially invited!