From June 10 to 14, the screens of the 22nd Kino Otok – Isola Cinema Festival will light up in Izola!

At public presentations in Ljubljana and Izola, the team behind the 22nd International Film Festival Kino Otok – Isola Cinema unveiled the festival’s diverse program, whose packed schedule will take place between June 10 and 14 in Izola. Before and after the festival, Kino Otok events—featuring film screenings and professional programs—will also take place in other locations across Slovenia, most extensively in Ljubljana. So far, we have included 143 films in the film program for the 22nd edition of the festival, comprising 58 feature-length and 85 short films from 45 countries, along with numerous filmmakers and other guests. This year’s program highlights the fresh perspective of young people, through which Kino Otok opens a space for new voices and non-nostalgic perspectives of those to whom the world irrevocably belongs.

Pre-festival warm-up on June 9 and festival opening with an Angolan film and a guest on June 10

Between June 10 and 14, movie screens will light up at seven popular festival venues in Izola; of particular interest to the general public are the outdoor venues in Izola—Lighthouse Park and Largo pri Špini, as well as the Manzioli and Arrigoni Open-Air Cinemas. We’ll focus primarily on the latter two below, while the full program is available on the festival’s website. In case of bad weather, screenings will be moved indoors.

The surprise screening is a traditional treat for the early birds among the festival audience and will take place at the Manzioli Open-Air Cinema as early as Tuesday, June 9, at 9:00 p.m. We won’t reveal the film’s title in advance, but we can easily assure you that this mysterious film, in true island style, will warm up the pre-festival evening and warmly invite you to attend the upcoming festival screenings. The program on Tuesday wil begin at 7 p.m. at the Manzioli Palace with the event Cinema on the Border withGorizia-based Kinoatelje, which will explore the experience of a shared cross-border space through film and discussion.

On Wednesday, June 10, at 9:00 p.m. we’ll open the festival at the Manzioli Open-Air Cinema with the film My Semba (Meu Semba, Angola, 2026) in the company of the director, Hugo Salvaterra. The film explores resilience and dignity amid the harsh daily realities of working-class people in the Angolan capital of Luanda, and serves as an ode to music, poetry, and film. “It is a meta-feature film in which the spoken word and rap—rooted in the great African oral traditions—come to life as mantras of affirmation and truth from subjective perspectives, seeking an urgent collective definition of our urban way of life in the spirit of the times,” Salvaterra said of his feature film debut.

Three festival evenings at the Arrigoni Open-Air Cinema, closing ceremony at the Manzioli Open-Air Cinema

Over the next few days, the festival’s evening screenings will move to the Arrigoni Open-Air Cinema, where on Thursday, June 11, the film A Year Of School (Un anno di scuola, Italy, 2025) will be shown, the second feature film by the acclaimed Italian director Laura Samani, for which she won the award for Best Director and Best Screenplay for filmmakers under 40 at the 2025 Venice Film Festival, and also received the David di Donatello Award for Most Promising Young Director. The story takes place in a cinematic Trieste, where fate brings together three longtime friends at a technical high school with a Swedish girl named Fred, who, as the only girl in her class, experiences the role that society assigns to women in a male-dominated world. In Izola, we will be joined by the film’s main protagonists, the young actors Giacomo Covi, Pietro Giustolisi, and Samuel Volturno. The film will be screened in collaboration with Kino Istra and with the support of the Italian Cultural Institute.

On Friday, June 12, at 9:00 p.m. at the Arrigoni Open-Air Cinema, we will screen Yugo Goes to America (Yugo ide u Ameriku, Serbia, Croatia, 2026) by Aleksa Borković and Filip Grujić, who will also introduce the film at the screening. Four young people from Belgrade cross the United States in a Yugo, a car once dubbed the worst car in history in America. They travel through 24 states from New York to Los Angeles, all in an effort to find the answer to the question: what does it mean to be the worst? “We were born in the 1990s and grew up with the Yugo that our parents drove while the country was falling apart. In Western popular culture, the Yugo—just like Yugoslavia—has become synonymous with collapse, conflict, and movie villains,” said the filmmakers, who will be joining us in Izola.

On Saturday, June 14, at 9:00 p.m. at the Arrigoni Open-Air Cinema, we will watch the film The Reserve (La Reserva, Mexico, 2024), the feature-length debut of Mexican director Pablo Pérez Lombardini, about Julia, a forest ranger who, like most residents of Monte Virgen, struggles to make a living growing coffee, but discovers that a group of loggers is destroying the reserve through illegal logging. Determined to stop them, she turns to the community for support, but they soon turn their backs on her. “The screenplay was written in parallel with numerous conversations with foresters, coffee growers, and experts on the region. Our goal was to find a story that the community could embrace as a reflection of their daily lives and the challenges they face now and may face in the future.” The film will be introduced by philosopher and essayist Dr. Tomaž Grušovnik, who explores environmental ethics in his work.

Sunday, June 14 will be entirely dedicated to film throughout the day, and at the closing event, See You Beyond the Horizon, we’ll bid farewell to this year’s festival at 9 p.m. at the Manzioli Open-Air Cinema to the Afro-Cuban rhythms played by the talented musicians of the Bend-it! Orchestra from Marezige.

The film program is rounded out by numerous guests and the festival staples Submarine and Video on the Beach

In addition to those already mentioned, we will be joined by numerous other guests, including Armenian director Tamara Stepanyan with her films In the Land of Arto (France, Armenia, 2025) and My Armenian Phantoms (France, Armenia, Qatar, 2025), Trieste-based director Alba Zari with her documentary White Lies (Italy, 2025), Austrian director Marie Luise Lehner with the film If You Are Afraid You Put Your Heart into Your Mouth and Smile (Austria, 2025), Slovenian director Ester Ivakič with Bambi by the River (Italy, Slovenia, 2025), Maja Alibegović with My Friend Sely (Croatia, 2025), and Anja Medved and Nadja Velušček with Forget Me Not (Slovenia, 2025), as well as Laurent Tesseyre, scenographer of Les Misérables (France, 1995) and many others.

Fans of short films will be in for a treat with the Video on the Beach section, which will take place over five festival evenings in Svetilnik Park, featuring compelling thematic blocks: Beyond Space, Spaceless, Changing Space, Distinctive Space and Unfixed Space.

In the Submarine section, designed for children, young people, and families, a common thread has emerged through the selection: stories of children and young people who, in various ways, are searching for their place in their families, communities, and the world. We’ll learn about the true story of a boy from the documentary Circusboy (Julia Lemke, Anna Koch, Germany, 2025), who grows up in a lively traveling circus family, and the family from the film Home Is the Ocean (Livia Vonaesch, Switzerland, 2024). The courage and curiosity of young girls take center stage in the films Mary Anning (Marcel Barelli, Switzerland, Belgium, 2025) and Lampie (Margien Rogaar, Netherlands, 2024), based on a popular book. We’ll complement the film screenings with a supporting program, ranging from exploring the sea with archaeologists and experts from the Maritime Museum to a juggling workshop.

Meeting of European Festival Networks at Kino Otok

Kino Otok, in collaboration with the Motovila Institute, is hosting a two-day meeting of European festival networks that, with the support of the Creative Europe MEDIA program, contribute to the development of the European festival ecosystem and the flow of knowledge, innovation, and audiences. On Thursday, June 11, at 3:00 p.m., representatives from five festival networks will discuss new collaborative approaches to film programming and audience engagement at the event Inside Festival Networks: Imaginative Ways of Building Film Communities of the Future: European Network for Film Discourse (Niels Putman, Talking Shorts), Moving Images – Open Borders (Nicoletta Romeo, Monica Goti, Trieste Film Festival), Northern Animation Network (Sandra Brunkow Simonsen, Viborg Animation Festival), Adriatic Festival Network (Franka Bihar, Zagreb Film Festival), and Young 4Film (Tanja Hladnik, Kino Otok – Isola Cinema).

Video Trailer for the 22nd Kino Otok – Isola Cinema Festival

The festival’s video trailer was once again created by Serbian editor and director Dragan von Petrović, a longtime friend and collaborator of Kino Otok. The visual design was once again created by the outstanding designer Urška Alič.