- [on Personal Baggage (2009)] I'm not interested at all to please selectors of international film festivals with speculative films about non-existing exotic Slovenia. In Personal Baggage I focus on today's complete inability to empathise. What makes the protagonist of the film interesting is her egoism, reflecting the general athmosphere of the present moment. The modern Slovenian society's unwillingness to cope with its typical Central European historical baggage bothers me as a filmmaker and especially - as a human being.
- I realised that no one except me could and should decide whether to make a film. I think that that realisation is of key importance to a director.
- [on Rustling Landscapes (2002)] The story takes place in the present day and deals with eternal themes. I'm not interested in day-to-day events and political topics. I'm much more interested in those small fateful things that are woven between people than I am in explosions and ideological bluster. With Rustling Landscapes I wanted to make a beautiful, intimate film.
- [on emotions in movies and Michael Haneke] By the way, in contrary to general superficial belief I find a lot of emotions in Michael Haneke's films. Philosophizing about mentioned issues is usually vain. I think a filmmaker is simply creating films about a human being acting on the screen for a human being sitting in the cinema. The filmmaker is always standing between the other two... standing or falling. All three have to do their own homework, and emotions can be a valuable encouragement on the way.
- [on Who's Afraid of the Big Black Wolf? (2012)] My father's childhood during the Second World War was the main inspiration although events in the film have nothing to do with his own personal experience of war. The fictional film story unfolds in 1944. In that year my father was of the same age as my younger son in the leading role during filming. And they both looked incredibly similar at the same age.
This film is also dedicated to Slovenian movie classics, and the first two Slovenian feature films were shot in the Alps. But a need for a remote scenery had a greater role for me. I was thinking about a place far from epic European battlefields in the World War Two. And mountain meadows surrounded by high peaks can be charming and scary at the same time. I was not interested to make a documentary-like short about Alpine shepherds' life in the past. Therefore a child in the film deliberately looks more like an angel rather than a dirty peasant. I felt the need for a character and a metaphor in the same person. And the Alps served me perfectly as kind of a fairy tale venue.
I had a chance to watch Sergeant Jim, the American version of the Slovenian classic Valley of Peace. There was an emotional scene, apparently censored in the original Slovenian version. The totalitarian authorities did not allow it due to a gospel sang as a lullaby by an American soldier. Only completely insurmountable idiots can throw such a subtle scene out of the movie. And so, that powerful scene recruited my thoughts for a decade, until I finally wrote Who's Afraid of the Big Black Wolf?. The music scene in Seargant Jim was a trigger point of the content, Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon served me as a starting point for the image of the whole. The black and white image was in my mind since the very first idea for this film.
Most of short films without dialogue look too artificial. I don't like to avoid dialogue. Spoken language in films is always a special challenge. It is important for this film that the main character does not understand English and German. Everybody has to be aware of that fact, including viewers. Misunderstanding of spoken words encourages other forms of communication between characters, and serves as an information for the viewer that this non-verbal communication is not a concept, but a necessity for characters. And it is significant that the main character is speaking only once, using just two simple, appropriate words. - There are only three substances from which it is worth creating a movie: love, death and freedom.
- I stick to the simple principle: The only person with whom I do not wish to argue is me.
- Prizes, media responses and the number of viewers tell mostly about the festivals, juries, commissions, awards ceremonies, about the media and the audience, and some of a kind of success of the film, but almost nothing about its quality. There are no objective criteria for it, let alone absolute ones. Whether a movie is good or not depends on the judgment of each viewer individually - if he or she is aware of the wonderful right to own view and own opinion.
- The audience has no opinion. Audience is merely the statistical mass, the number of people who go to the cinema. When I sit in the cinema, I am not an audience, I'm a viewer. An individual with my own opinion, view and position.
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