See You Beyond the Horizon

Sunday at the Kino Otok will unfold at a relaxed yet no less lively festival pace. The Submarine program will take youngsters and families on a cinematic journey through the sea, while film enthusiasts at the Art Cinema Odeon will travel through Armenia, Belarus, and the Venetian plains. The final evening of Video on the Beach will also be dedicated to stories of change, transitions, and the search for one’s place in the world, and this year’s festival will bid farewell to the audience in a slightly different way than usual—not with a film, but with a lively concert featuring music and dance under the starry sky.

Submarine in the House of Culture, Stories from Armenia, Belarus and the Venetian Plains in the Art Cinema Odeon

On Sunday, June 14, at 10 a.m. at the House of Culture we’ll kick off the Submmarine program with the film Lampie (Margien Rogaar, Netherlands, 2024, 10+) about a girl who lives with her father in a lighthouse; after the film, visitors will set out on a cinematic seaside stroll along the Izola coast. At 1 p.m., there will be a presentation of a special historical program selected by young programmers: the cult film Daisies (Sedmikrásky, 1966) by Czech director Věra Chytilová and the legendary experimental short film Gratinated Brains of Pupilija Ferkeverk (Slovenia (Yugoslavia), 1970). As part of their collaboration with the Slovenian Cinematheque, the young programmers over the age of 15have selected a program of two films for the first time this year; they will briefly introduce the films before the screening and then discuss them with director and cinematographer Karpo Godina. The young curators will also premiere their own experimental video, which they created inspired by Daisies.

At the Art Cinema Odeon, viewers will be able to immerse themselves in diverse worlds, some closer to home and others more distant. On Sunday at 11:00 a.m., we begin with the Armenian documentary In the Land of Arto (Tamara Stepanyan, France, Armenia, 2025, 104’), in which Céline travels to her husband Art’s native Armenia for the first time after his death to sort out his paperwork. There she discovers that her husband had lied to her: he fought in the war, stole someone’s identity, and was regarded as a deserter among his former friends. We continue with the unique film White Snail (Elsa Kremser, Levin Peter, Austria, Germany, 2025, 115’) about Masha, a model from Belarus, who unexpectedly finds herself drawn to Misha, a solitary night-shift worker at a morgue. We’ll wrap up the day and the film program in Izola at 5:00 p.m. with the laid-back yet revealing road movie The Last One for the Road (Francesco Sossai, Italy, Germany, 2025, 100’), where the central story unfolds across the Venetian plains, and plans are constantly upended by bad advice, hangovers, and unexpected friendships. “I wanted to portray a true ‘lost generation’: men born in the 1970s, during a time of rapid economic growth, who were confronted with a radically different world after the 2008 crisis. To me, they belong to the twilight generation—children of a world that was already disappearing, and strangers to the one in which they now live,” said Francesco Sossai about the film.

The fifth evening of the Video on the Beach program focuses on Unfixed Space

We conclude the Video on the Beach program on Sunday with the fluidity of space and the people within it. On the one hand, this can be understood as instability, but it also brings with it mobility, changeability, development, and the potential for transformation. And what a fitting title Unfixed Space. The program will feature the following films: Loynes (Dorian Jespers, Belgium, France, North Macedonia, UK, 2025, 25’03’’), Nazorjeva Street (Matevž Jerman, Rok Kajzer Nagode, Niko Novak, Slovenia, 2025, 11’27’’), Dollhouse Elephant (Jenny Jokela, Finland, 2025, 11’11’’), The Dark Hill (Vanja Miloš Jovanović, Slovenia, 2025, 14’37’’), Baby Money (Matjaž Jamnik, Gaja Naja Rojec, Slovenia, 2025, 15’13’’), No Contest (Olivier Wright, France, 2025, 18’02’’), No Photos Please (Asiana Jurca Avci, Urša Rahne, Slovenia, 2025, 6’09’’), Women’s Club (Anđelina Petrović, Slovenia, 2025, 3’56’’).

See You Beyond the Horizon at Manzioli Square

We’re wrapping things up with a bang, right where we began on Tuesday with a surprise screening. While the day will still be entirely dedicated to film, we’ll bid farewell to this year’s festival at the closing event, See You Beyond the Horizon at 9 p.m. on Manzioli Square, set to Afro-Cuban rhythms performed by the big band Bend-it! Orchestra from Marezige, which will conjure up the perfect atmosphere for dancing and take the audience beyond the horizon—to the South American continent.