Jury for feature films: Andrej Gustinčič, Juraj Lerotić, and Natalija Majsova
Jury for short fiction, documentary, experimental, animated, and student films: Sara Bezovšek, Nikola Majdak, and Slavko Hren
VESNA AWARDS
Vesna Award for Best Feature Film
Little Trouble Girls
Directed by: Urška Djukić
Production: Zavod SPOK
Jury statement: Thanks to its distinctive cinematic language, building on careful interweaving of acting, sound, and camera work, Little Trouble Girls offers a unique aesthetic experience. By giving an insight into the existential complexity of adolescence, the film compellingly and thoughtfully unfolds a wide range of eternal themes – from friendship, love, and sexuality to solidarity and betrayal. The empathetic perspective consistently developed by the film opens up space for the organic coexistence of humour and seriousness, love and contempt, hope and fear.
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Vesna Award for Best Director
Petra Seliškar
for The Mountain Won’t Move
Jury statement: The filmmaker Petra Seliškar has created an unforgettable documentary about a disappearing way of life. Her direction combines stunning landscapes with carefully observed personal details, creating a film that is both epic and intimate, and which could be described as one of the most beautiful films about boys ever made.
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Vesna Award for Best Screenplay
Petr Krajíček, Marek Král, Patrik Pašš, Jerneja Kaja Balog, Maja Križnik, Blandine Jet and the author of the original story, Arnošt Goldflam
for Tales from the Magic Garden
Jury statement: While elegantly reawakening childhood hopes and fears, the screenplay also delves into loss and the power of family connections across generations, doing so with a tinge of lightness and an understanding of a child’s view of the world.
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Vesna Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role
Jara Sofija Ostan
for her role in Little Trouble Girls
Jury statement: The award for Best Actress in a Leading Role goes to Jara Sofija Ostan for her extraordinarily subtle portrayal of a young woman’s inner transformation. With little dialogue, which relies heavily on looks and gestures, Jara Sofija Ostan conveys a complex range of emotions – from fragility and shame to liberation and self-awareness. In her first role on film, Ostan captures, with outstanding authenticity, the contradictions and emotional complexity that give the film its profoundly human and authentic character. Characterised by grave honesty and emotional power, her acting is the film’s central pillar.
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Vesna Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role
Ólafur Darri Ólafsson
for his role in Hidden People
Jury statement: The award for Best Actor in a Leading Role goes to Ólafur Darri Ólafsson for his convincing performance that endows the dramedy Hidden People with a demonstration of the complexity of human intimacy. In the film, Ólafsson gives a subtle performance as a man who has lost his footing, skilfully manoeuvring between humour and tragedy while maintaining a consistent, precise acting style. With his unobtrusive presence, Ólafur Darri Ólafsson builds a strong emotional bond between his character and the audience.
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Vesna Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role
Mina Švajger
for her role in Little Trouble Girls
Jury statement: The award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role goes to Mina Švajger for her role as Ana-Marija in Little Trouble Girls. Although powerful and attractive, her performance makes room for the lead actress to develop her complementary role. Throughout the film, Mina Švajger continues to surprise and deftly reveal new nuances of Ana-Marija’s personality. Her acting energy drives the emotional transformation of the main protagonist, adding layers of intensity, sensuality, and unpredictability to the film.
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Vesna Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role
Saša Tabaković
for his role in Little Trouble Girls
Jury statement: The award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role goes to Saša Tabaković for his both subtle and powerful rendering of an authority embodying social and generational pressures in Little Trouble Girls. Tabaković portrays the antagonist without patronising or judging him, thus allowing the audience to relate and understand his inner conflicts. Saša Tabaković crafts his supporting role with a perfect dramatic arc in which every movement carries meaning and emotion.
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Vesna Award for Best Cinematography
Gregor Božič
for Fiume o morte!
Jury statement: The director of photography, Gregor Božič, evocatively and flawlessly intertwines the light and shadow of the past and present, two periods separated by more than a century. His cinematography in the present revives feelings of past events and political traumas.
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Vesna Award for Best Original Music
Relja Ćupić
for Fantasy
Jury statement: The award for Best Original Music goes to Relja Ćupić for his music in Fantasy. Ćupić’s compositions are an indispensable element of the film’s world, which is both magical and largely familiar. Ćupić’s music enhances the complexity of the protagonists’ journeys, creating a profoundly memorable viewing experience of being fully immersed in the film.
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Vesna Award for Best Editing
Laureline Delom and Sashko Potter Micevski
for The Mountain Won’t Move
Jury statement: The editing in The Mountain Won’t Move shifts between being contemplative and exciting, just as the daily life it shows, thereby allowing the audience to experience the events in the same way as the protagonists. It is a perfect example of the so-called invisible editing, one which achieves its purpose without drawing attention to itself.
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Vesna Award for Best Production Design
Maja Šavc
for Fantasy
Jury statement: The award for Best Production Design goes to Maja Šavc for her outstanding work in Fantasy. Carefully designed scenes draw on the region’s multifaceted collective memory, creating a varied, dreamlike world tightly intertwined with the characters’ changing identities, relationships, and interactions.
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Vesna Award for Best Costume Design
Damir Raković
for Fantasy
Jury statement: The award for Best Costume Design goes to Damir Raković for his excellent work in Fantasy. With courageous combinations of colours, textures, and traditions, Raković enhances the film’s dreamlike world, fully embracing the liberating eclecticism of contemporary popular culture.
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Vesna Award for Best Make-up
Tinka Prpar
for Fantasy
Jury statement: The award for Best Make-up goes to Tinka Prpar for her work in Fantasy. Her playful yet confident approach effectively underpins the central topics the film explores: the vulnerability and resilience of the protagonists, who tellingly resist social and cultural norms and undergo inner transformations in the process.
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Vesna Award for Best Sound
Julij Zornik
for Little Trouble Girls
Jury statement: In a film about a girl discovering her voice, sound designer Julij Zornik masterfully used a soundtrack of subtle noises to highlight, through sound, the protagonist’s emotional awakening. Whispers, breathing, clothes rubbing against skin, and barely perceptible sounds become a narrative element equal to the picture. Zornik is awarded for an acoustic landscape that we not only hear with our ears but also perceive with our bodies.
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Vesna Award for Best Minority Co-production
Fiume o morte!
Directed by: Igor Bezinović
Slovenian co-producer: Marina Gumzi (Nosorogi)
Jury statement: With the invaluable help of the Slovenian director of photography Gregor Božič, Croatian filmmaker Igor Bezinović made an utterly unique film about a brutal, bizarre event from the post-WWI era. An astounding combination of archive material and recreations, this is a living, breathing film that brings history to life in a way very few films have managed.
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Vesna Award for Special Achievement
Fantasy
Directed by: Kukla
Jury statement: The award for Special Achievement goes to Fantasy for the originality, ambition, and courage distinguishing its fictional world. Its director, Kukla, and director of photography, Lazar Bogdanović, create a hypnotic vision of a world in the making, where élan vital not only questions tradition but transforms the material, auditory, and visual traces of the past that haunt the present into a force of renewal that manifests itself through the protagonists’ everyday actions.
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Vesna Award for Best Documentary
Man with Straw Hat
Directed by: Urban Zorko
Jury statement: A concise narrative film about the life of Hinko Smrekar. The thoughtful, well-paced narration and stylistically accomplished animation keep the viewer’s attention in suspense until the very last frame of his tragic fate.
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Vesna Award for Best Short Fiction Film
DEATH 101 – An Introduction for Beginners: A Handbook with Regulations, Norms, and Useful Tips. Third, Revised Edition
Directed by: Martin Horvat
Jury statement: Creatively blending black humour and absurdity, the film raises questions about mortality and compassion. Through outstanding direction and compelling performances, it reveals the senselessness of bureaucracy and the powerlessness of individuals in the face of its rules.
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Vesna Award for Best Animated Film
Tales from the Magic Garden
Directed by: David Súkup, Patrik Pašš, Leon Vidmar, Jean-Claude Rozec
Jury statement: Warm, sincere, and artistically perfected, the film discusses loss, memory, and the love that remains. Using sophisticated stop-motion animation, it takes the audience into a world where sadness and beauty intertwine, gently raising the topics of transience and acceptance.
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Vesna Award for Best Experimental AV Work (Experimental Film)
The jury chose not to present the award.
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Vesna Award for Best Student Film
Arachnophobia
Directed by: Melita Sandrin
Production: UNG School of Arts
Jury statement: The film offers a humorous take on overcoming fear. With an imaginative use of animation, the filmmaker skilfully combines tension, fun, and warmth, demonstrating an honest creative expression that impresses with its masterful, technically accomplished execution.
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Vesna Award for Special Achievement
OHO Film
Directed by: Damjan Kozole
Jury statement: The film celebrates the boldness and freedom of thinking outside established frameworks, providing in-depth insight into a vital part of Slovenian art history while inspiring today’s and future generations of artists, where the boundaries between the possible and the impossible become a testing ground for artistic expression.
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Vesna Audience Award
When I Get Out
Directed by: Metod Pevec
Average score: 4,88
OTHER AWARDS
Slovenian Art Cinema Association Award
for best feature film
Jury: Blaž Cotman, Armand Meterc, and Erik Toth
The Mountain Won’t Move
Directed by: Petra Seliškar
Jury statement: With a keen sense of rhythm and detail, The Mountain Won’t Move, an observational documentary by Petra Seliškar, provides an unvarnished yet poetic insight into the pastoral existence of three young brothers in the mountains of North Macedonia, where routine becomes both happiness and space for doubt. Against the backdrop of an apparent idyll, a deeper narrative of meaning, closeness, and transience emerges, only to ebb into the quietly poetic inevitability of existence. Throughout the film, the director keeps gently encouraging the audience to reflect on who is actually more “removed” from the concept of life.
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The Association of Slovenian Film Critics Award
for best Slovenian feature film in the Official Competition
Jury: Tina Bernik, Vanja Gajić, and Darko Štrajn
Little Trouble Girls
Directed by: Urška Djukić
Jury statement: Any individual liberation from social constraints takes place through a combination of recognising one’s own differences and finding common ground in the form of friendships. In Urška Djukić’s world, complex relationships are depicted in a cinematically balanced portrayal of the critical period of adolescence caught in the whirlwind of physical excitement and the allure of transcendence. For these reasons, we present the critics’ award for best Slovenian feature film to Little Trouble Girls.