Slovenian ambassador Tomaz Kunstel attended the screening of a Slovenian movie shown as part of the European Film Festival.
If Ottawa residents wanted to shake up their movie-watching habits during the past few weeks, all they had to do was go to the library.
The 25th annual European Union Film Festival was held at Library and Archives Canada where 34 films were shown with English subtitles, one from each European Union country. But anyone looking for a decades-old film noir classic would have been disappointed.
Every film in the lineup was a popular film in its country, made during the past three years.
Tom McSorley, executive director of the Canadian Film Institute, says he chooses the films himself in consultation with the embassy of each country.
“They’re films I’ve seen around the world, scouting film festivals in Toronto or Montreal, sometimes in Berlin or Cannes,” McSorley says.
He says his main criteria are that films must be no more than three or four years old and must be making their Ottawa premiere.
“It’s primarily drama, but we do have a couple of feature-length documentaries and even some animation this year,” he says.
The lineup for Dec. 2 was a Romanian-Slovenian double feature and 150 or so people came to the theatre at Library and Archives Canada to take in two subtitled crime thrillers.
European films “are usually much more engaged in social drama,” McSorley says.
“Every country is different, but (the films) are usually not as glossy or star driven. They all seem engaged in wrestling with questions of history or identity. And they’re often beautifully made, because they’re more artistic than commercial.”
Questions of history are very prominent in the Slovenian entry, Pokrajina #2 (Landscape #2), a story about two small-time art thieves who set off a chain of gruesome killings when they accidentally steal incriminating Second World War-era documents.
Additionally, the sex scenes are far more explicit and the murder scenes far more bloody than one would find in most North American films.
Carleton University student Scott Schmidt says he only comes to the Slovenian film night every year because his mother, an embassy employee, makes him come, but he enjoys the film anyway.
“These films aren’t blockbusters; they’re different,” Schmidt says. “It’s a nice different. There’s a low budget, less money spent, so they have to be more creative.”
“It’s a unique experience for us,” says Joe Kramar, who came to the film with his wife and some friends. “We’re Slovenian, and we don’t get much of a chance to associate with other Slovenians.”
“We (Slovenian-Canadians) are a very small community here,” Kramar said.
“We’re an older community, a shrinking community. We used to have three dances a year, now I think it’s two, or maybe even one. And our kids aren’t really interested in Slovenian things. So it’s great to have the opportunity to mingle with other Slovenians.”
Kramar, who speaks Slovenian, says he was looking forward to listening to the dialogue rather than reading the subtitles.
Slovenia is a country of about two million people, nestled between Italy, Austria and Croatia in southeastern Europe.
It is not to be confused with Slovakia, which borders on the Czech Republic.
The country is perhaps best known for its skiers and its World Cup soccer team, although it has “punched way above its weight” in European cinema in the past few years, according to McSorley, who has written about Slovenia’s film scene.
Carleton University graduate student Viren Gandhi says he makes a point of coming to the festival every year.
“I come because they’re non-Hollywood movies,” he says. “It’s always a good story, an amazing story, but they’re set in another culture, so you feel like you’re travelling.”
“That’s a real advantage,” McSorley says.
“You can travel; you can be in Spain for an hour and a half and not leave Ottawa.”
McSorley said preparations for next year’s festival are already underway.
It will be held Nov.16-Dec. 4 at Library and Archives Canada.