Cross-Border Film Festival Tribute to a Vision
The Cross-Border Film Festival Tribute to a Vision creates an open, challenging, and innovative cross-border film landscape where the author and the audience meet in direct dialogue.
The Cross-Border Film Festival Tribute to a Vision creates an open, challenging, and innovative cross-border film landscape where the author and the audience meet in direct dialogue. Film and audiovisual art are excellent tools for exploring society, its changes, and bringing cultures closer together – both those from near and far. This belief inspired Darko Bratina, the founder of Kinoatelje. From this heritage, the Tribute to a Vision festival was developed, which, for over 25 years, offers an eclectic film experience, and through the platform First Crossings, young filmmakers freely expand fresh cinematic languages.
The founder of Kinoatelje, sociologist and film critic Darko Bratina (1942—1997), attributed a special cognitive and communicative role to the film, television, and video media: he believed that it was the best means of understanding society, history, and culture. The award named after him follows this vision, selecting works and authors whose aesthetic values complement a special attention to the historical and social context and advocate for intercultural communication. In 1999, the first award was given to director Maja Weiss for the documentary The Road of Brotherhood and Unity (Cesta Bratstva in Enotnosti); a complete list of award winners is shown below.
Today, the award encompasses the form of the cross-border film festival Tribute to a Vision, which takes place in the interregional space between Slovenia and Italy, connecting both audiences and film institutions in seven different cities (Gorizia, Nova Gorica, Trieste, Izola, Špeter, Udine, and Ljubljana). The distance between the cities, measured in kilometers, is not large, but their cultural diversity is pronounced and constitutes the richness of our cross-border area. Conversations with the awarded filmmakers, film screenings, and expert workshops (masterclasses) are organized in cooperation with partners from each city. The entire program is bilingual (in Italian and Slovenian), except for the expert workshop – masterclass, which takes place in English.
Since 2018, the festival has introduced a new program section First Crossings/Prvi Poleti/Primi Voli, designed as a platform for developing new cinematic languages, highlighting and presenting works by young filmmakers who are at the beginning of their creative paths. These are cineastes who experiment with film language and observe the world around them with curiosity, exploring the endless possibilities offered by the audiovisual medium.
The family of authors and award recipients of the Darko Bratina Award grows every year. More and more respected, interesting, and groundbreaking creators and filmmakers are joining us, and we continue to follow them with pleasure. Therefore, since 2015, the festival has been enriched with the accompanying program Award Through Time, in which we proudly present the latest productions by past award recipients and revisit their timeless masterpieces.
From unedited material that Aljoša Žerjal pulled from his drawers, a montage laboratory was born – an open, free, and creative workshop called Visions of Remains. A Tribute to Žerjal/Vizije ostankov. Poklon Žerjalu/Visioni di scarto. Omaggio a Žerjal, where young creators, under the mentorship of Alina Marazzi, reinterpreted "remnants" of Žerjal's films. The selected material, which had been stored (and forgotten) over the years, was given to two young editors who spent a week as guests at Postaja Topolove. The resulting work was presented at the Tribute to a Vision festival in October 2018.
The festival is more than just that; it also offers an educational dimension for professionals in the AV sector. In 2019, Kinoatelje, together with Zavod Otok and Motoviloa(Czk), became a partner of the PRO KUS consortium, which advocates for better conditions for cultural production and the professionalization of cultural and creative sectors. The purpose of the consortium is to train and empower representatives of Slovenian KUS for competent operation in the national and international space. The consortium also organizes educational content as part of the festival, providing development for the local environment at the European level.