GORDAN MATIĆ
screenwriter and director
Gordan Matić (1971) has a bachelor’s degree from the Faculty of Culture and Media, Belgrade, and master’s degrees from the University of Arts, Belgrade, and Lumière University Lyon 2, France. Matić has worked across cinema, television, and theatre for more than two decades while serving a stint as the director of Film Centre Serbia. His most notable works include Ginger: More than a Game (Žućko, priča o Radivoju koraću, 2011), and Bullets over Marseille (Pucnji u Marseju, 2021).
OLMO OMERZU
director and screenwriter
Olmo Omerzu studied at the FAMU film school in Prague, where he developed a passion for making films that explore human nature, family relationships, and people’s expectations of themselves. His first two films premiered at the Berlinale and San Sebastian film festivals, while his third feature, Winter Flies, earned him the Best Director award at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in 2018, along with six wins at the Czech Lions film awards and a spot in the official selection for the Toronto IFF 2018. His next film, Bird Atlas, premiered at the Karlovy Vary IFF in 2021. His English-language debut, titled Ungrateful Beings, is currently in post-production.
MIRAN ZUPANIČ
screenwriter and director
Miran Zupanič (1961) graduated from both law and film schools. His documentaries focus on people’s destinies at defining moments in history. The topics discussed in his films include the harshest political prison in the former Yugoslavia, on the island of Goli Otok (Tek za življenje, 1990), the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Oči Bosne, 1993), the Petriček camp for children of alleged or actual Nazi collaborators (Children from Petriček Hill, 2007), and the story of foreigners who paid to shoot at the inhabitants of besieged Sarajevo (Sarajevo Safari, 2022). Zupanič is also a screenwriter and director of fiction films. Since 1997, he has taught film directing at the Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television of the University of Ljubljana.
ANJA BANKO
film critic and reviewer
Anja Banko is a film critic, film educator, and programme associate of the Slovenian Cinematheque. She is the former editor of ‘Temna zvezda’, a programme about cinema on Radio Študent, and currently a co-creator of the feminist radio programme ‘Zdrmana’ on the same station. She publishes in magazines such as Ekran and occasionally in daily newspapers, and is one of the co-creators and tutors of Ekran’s film criticism club ‘Do zadnje besede’. She also collaborates on Kinodvor’s Kinotrip and Kinobalon programmes for young audiences, while preparing numerous film education materials. Since 2022, she has been one of the programme curators in the Slovenian Cinematheque. She is a member of the programming team of the International Festival of Experimental Audiovisual Practices V-F-X Ljubljana.
JASNA HRIBERNIK
director and video artist
Jasna Hribernik is a university-trained film director who has worked as a freelance filmmaker and multimedia artist since 1985. Her documentaries, which demonstrate a strong auteurist approach, have won several awards. In the early 1990s, Hribernik ventured into the field of video art, which allowed her to democratise images in motion and explore the different dimensions of the film medium. Research, experimentation, the interplay of different media and the search for answers to ontological questions have led her to the field of science and increasingly complex new media projects. Since 2012, she has worked as an associate professor at the School of Arts of the University of Nova Gorica.
PETRA SELIŠKAR
film producer and director
Petra Seliškar (1978) is a director, producer, and screenwriter. She studied at the NFTA Netherlands Film and Television Academy in Amsterdam and earned a postgraduate degree in film directing and production at the Northern Media School in Sheffield. In 2003, she founded the production company Petra Pan Film, and in 2010 the MakeDox creative documentary film festival and a travelling cinema in Macedonia. She is the founder of the Doc around Europe festival network and the Make CoProDocs Forum. Seliškar has produced more than 20 international fiction and documentary films. She is a member of the European Film Academy and the DAE, the first Chair of the Directors Guild of Slovenia Documentary Section and a tutor in its Documentary Filmmaking Workshop. Her feature films Grandmothers of Revolution, Mother Europe, My World Is Upside Down, The Farewell, and Body have had successful international festival runs and won her numerous international awards.
AUDIENCE AWARD
The best feature film as selected by the audience is decided directly by viewers casting their votes. The procedure is described in detail in the Rules of the Festival of Slovenian Film. The award goes to the producer.
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Association of Slovenian Film Critics Award
The Fipresci Association of Slovenian Film Critics presents its award for best Slovenian feature film in the Official Competition of the Festival of Slovenian Film Portorož with the aim of providing additional promotion for cinema, particularly up-and-coming (young) talent.
Jury for the Association of Slovenian Film Critics Award
Maša Peče works as a film curator and writer, film festival producer, editor, and translator. She is a long-time collaborator of Kinodvor and the Slovenian Cinematheque with long experience of working for film festivals in Slovenia and internationally (Kino Otok, Animateka, City of Women, FSF, Karlovy Vary, SLASH Fantastic Film Festival in Vienna). Her articles on film have been published in Ekran, KINO!, Kinotečnik, in the Croatian film magazine Filmonaut and the Australian online magazine Senses of Cinema. Since 2014, she has curated the Erotic Film Night programme ‘Kinosloga. Retrosex.’ at Kinodvor, Ljubljana. Between 2014 and 2024 she was the Programme Director and Producer of the ‘Kurja Polt’ genre film festival. She is a member of the editorial board of Ekran magazine.
Varja Močnik graduated in film and TV directing from AGRFT, Ljubljana. In 2003-2006, she worked with the Slovenian Cinematheque as an assistant programme manager. It was then that she started writing and translating texts on film. She worked with the Cinematheque again as a curator of the film programme in 2014-2022 and continues to work with them in various capacities today. She has worked for the Kino Otok – Isola Cinema film festival in various capacities since its first edition, becoming the main programmer in 2013, a position she has held ever since. In recent years, she has been involved in various film education programmes. Since 2020, she has worked as a lecturer in film history and theory at the School of Arts of the University of Nova Gorica.
Kristian Božak Kavčič works as a film writer, editor, and educator. He graduated in film and TV editing from AGRFT, Ljubljana. For his graduation film, he and his fellow directing and cinematography students received the university’s Prešeren Award, and the film was selected for the Cinéfondation section of the 73rd Cannes Film Festival. As an editor, Božak Kavčič has worked on short films about film professions (produced by the Slovenian Federation of Filmmakers’ Guilds), and in 2022, he was one of the editors of the documentary LGBT_SLO_1984. He earned a master’s degree in film and television studies (AGRFT) with a thesis on the protection of film heritage in Slovenia and sustainability. In the last year of his studies, he was a scholarship holder of the Milan Lenarčič University Foundation. Božak Kavčič has been an assistant and tutor at several film criticism workshops and runs a film criticism club at the Bežigrad High School. His articles, including a peer-reviewed original scientific paper, have been published in KINO!, as well as Ekran magazine. In 2023, he received the Nika Bohinc Award for best theoretical essay.
Slovenian Art Cinema Association Award
The award presented by AKMS, an association that brings together arthouse film exhibitors, supports the screening and promotion of the award-winning feature film in 28 cinemas across Slovenia. The jurors for the 2024 award are: Suzana Kokalj (Mestni kino Domžale), Vesna Telič Kovač (Kulturni dom Cerknica), and Uroš Zavodnik (Kino Slovenj Gradec / Kulturni dom Slovenj Gradec).
Suzana Kokalj (1987) studied art history at the Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana and multimedia production at the Institute and Academy of Multimedia, graduating from both programmes with a thesis on cinema. She worked in various production roles (RTV, Studio Siposh, RAW, IRE Studios), before joining the team of the Domžale City Cinema in 2023. Her biggest passion, screenwriting, has led her from participating at the Hypewriter Pitching Forum in Budapest to presenting her project at the TV Beats Co-Financing Market as part of the 26th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.
Vesna Telič Kovač studied comparative literature at the Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana. During her studies, she was one of the first members of the Kinopolis film club at the then newly founded Slovenian Cinematheque, after developing a passion for cinema thanks to her high school art education professor with the film Wings of Desire. Telič Kovač has been a long-time collaborator of the Cerknica House of Culture, where a regional cinema has been established to screen quality arthouse films, hosting Q&As with filmmakers, highlighting selected gems of local and foreign cinema, and popularising and advancing film culture in the Notranjska region. She also works on literary events, music concerts, exhibitions and talks with various guests.
Uroš Zavodnik is a freelance artist, film director, screenwriter, and actor who has made a number of fiction and documentary films. He graduated in film art from AAU, Klagenfurt, and obtained a PhD from AAU and AGRFT, Ljubljana. He is a member of the Vajevec Brothers Actor Studio. A poet, photographer, and former musician, Zavodnik teaches film and photography as an assistant professor for Visual Art – Film and Photography at the University of Primorska, University of Maribor and the AMEU Dance Academy. He is a long-time collaborator of the Art Cinema Association of Slovenia, more precisely the Slovenj Gradec Cinema, in film education programmes for audiences of all ages.