Damian’s Room

Le chambre de Damien / Damian’s Room 14+ 

Jasna Krajinovič, Belgium, Slovenia, 2008, 73′ 

This sensitive yet relentless portrait of the lost youth of the socially alienated Damjan is one of the highlights of Slovenian documentary cinema.  

Selected by young programmers in collaboration with the Slovenian Cinematheque. After the screening, they talk to the film director. 

A text on the film by the young programmers Eva Plešec, Tjaša Štern and Anej Košorok: The Invisible Walls of Damian’s Room

Have you ever found yourself in a situation when your strivings for change were just a drop in the ocean? Jasna Krajinović has created a touching intertwinement of a personal story and the hegemony of the social environment, in which an individual is merely an aggregate of external factors. In her documentary, we get to know the 20-year-old Damian, his stay in the juvenile prison in Celje and his adaptation to the life outside prison. In the course of the film, we come to know him drop by drop – his confrontation with the consequences of his actions, the cruel reality of the correctional facility and the stigma it brings. In his small room behind bars, something new and hopeful emerges. We are thrown into an almost direct dialogue with Damian and we get to know him through our eyes and his. Damian goes beyond being just the protagonist and, with his own footage, becomes a co-creator of the film. Through the black-and-white contrast of his footage, which is stripped of the excess of sounds, we get the feeling of being literally in Damian’s head, experiencing the world through his gaze.

On the other hand, the camera observes him, sometimes like a fly on the wall, sometimes assuming the role of a collocutor whom Damian confesses and tells things to, without pushing unequivocal answers on the viewers and moralising but rather enabling the viewers to make their own judgement on what they see. The confrontation with reality is inevitable, which is especially emphasised with long static shots, which force us to sit with Damian’s feelings. Moreover, once we finally get up and leave his room, we are still constrained by invisible walls. Even though Damian goes forward, his relationships have remained in the past, while his image is subjected to the distrust of his environment and prejudices. He thus has difficulty building on close relationships and is simultaneously engaged in the struggle for his own identity, still trapped in the vicious circle of difficult circumstances. Only time will tell whether he will make it.

The component of time thus becomes one of the key topics. With its passing, time objectivises Damian’s experiences but simultaneously also establishes the feeling of entrapment and constriction within the system. The walls, however, are not built only by institutions but are chillingly spreading in society in general. Each of us has their own Damian’s room. The question is whether we will manage to tear them down and get out.

Film poster by the Cinematheque’s young programmers

A short film by young selectors inspired by the film Damjan’s Room