Kino Otok says goodbye to Izola and moves to Ljubljana tomorrow

121 films, more than 20 other events, 34 film guests and 6,000 visitors of all generations celebrated film for five vibrant festival days in Izola between 5 and 9 June 2024. The diverse but close-knit community of the 20th International Film Festival Kino Otok – Isola Cinema – including many guests, visitors and team members who have followed the festival faithfully since its first editions – celebrated the anniversary and paid tribute to the timelessness of the art of cinema. This year’s festival programme in Cerknica, Idrija, Sežana and Tolmin has also come to an end, and Otok in Ljubljana continues at Kinodvor and the Slovenian Cinematheque, with Kino Otok already looking towards the future.

In Izola, the festival fosters a community of all generations

Kino Otok filled nine venues across Izola under the roof and under the stars: Manzioli Open-Air Cinema, Arrigoni Open-Air Cinema, Odeon Art Cinema, House of Culture, Sončna dvorana of the JSKD Izola, Lighthouse Park and Beach, Largo pri špini and Manzioli Palace. The films on the programme came from Slovenia, Europe and the world, with an important focus on local filmmakers. We hosted workshops, panel discussions, a masterclass, lectures, a music-visual event and a number of exhibitions. Throughout the non-competition programme, we screened 44 feature films and 77 short films for adults, youth and children at 46 screenings, with 43 festival guests, including 34 filmmakers, coming to present them live.

We brought 420 children to five of the festival’s school screenings. As part of the international festival network Young Selectors for Young Audiences!, a record 53 primary and secondary school children from Istria, Ljubljana and abroad visited Izola as young film selectors.

PRO Otok has organised six events, this year strongly marked by the intertwining with the film programme through the focus Found Image. The evenings were rounded off at the Lighthouse with eclectic live musical performances by musicians from the cross-border region. The film community grew and blossomed every day, culminating on Saturday evening when we also lit twenty birthday candles and wished the festival well in its future creation of the most cinematic Island of the Home Sea.

Otok in Ljubljana begins its after-festival screenings at Kinodvor

Otok in Ljubljana traditionally brings selected films for those who missed the screenings in Izola, but this year we have also brought a good number of films that you couldn’t see in Izola. In Kinodvor, with the support of the French Institute, we continue the programme on Wednesday, 12 June at 18.30, with a multi-layered portrait of Guinea through the search for the lost film in The Cemetery of Cinema (Au cimetière de la pellicule, Thierno Souleymane Diallo, 2023). At 9.30 pm, Black Tea (2024) will open this year’s Kinodvorišče. Abderrahmane Sissako’s mysterious film talks about love and freedom, which bridges the divides between Africa and China, dreams and reality, and the past and the present. Then we take a summer break and we’ll meet again in September and October.

Otok in Ljubljana continues at the Slovenian Cinematheque

On Thursday, 14 June at 8pm, the Slovenian Cinematheque will screen Vitaly Mansky and Yevhen Titarenko’s documentary Eastern Front (Shidnij front, 2023), a raw and direct close-up look at Ukraine’s eastern battle line and life on the home front in the west. After the summer break, we return with a retrospective of films by Russian director Kira Muratova.