Earth Beneath a Dark Lid

Following the death of Josip Broz Tito (1892–1980), one city in each of the six republics and two autonomous regions of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia had the honour to be named after the long-serving president. Having been chosen due to leftist ideas, proletarian character, industrialisation, urbanisation and modernity, they were often privileged. Now located across seven countries, not one of these cities is still named after Tito. We learn the stories of these cities from their residents who look back at the period under Tito’s name. Many of these stories are tragic since the majority of cities have been touched by war.

Cmurek castle, formerly a mental institution, is now home to the Museum of Madness. The local community realizes that stories about the castle, the fates of the patients, the accounts of the staff, and the personal items left in the castle make an important if also difficult legacy.

Ivan Cankar experienced many things only after he has written about them. In the film, this link between his writing and his private life is depicted by live-action and animated scenes that draw exclusively on the writer’s works and letters to his loved ones. For an entire decade, he lived with the Löffler family in Vienna, where he wrote most of his impressive oeuvre. First, he grew very close to the lady of the house, then to her adolescent daughter Steffi. Back in Ljubljana, he got involved with several girls there, an attentive lover of a cheerful nature, accessible and highly intelligent. His popular public lectures reveal him as a passionate social democrat.

A good century after Tivoli Hotel opened in Ljubljana, the building underwent a thorough restoration to become the Švicarija Creative Centre. Known for decades as “the cradle of Slovenian sculpture”, it had been home to artists as well as oddities and Russian migrants. The documentary combines personal accounts from former residents with archive material and the life this extraordinary building has today.

This story of various shelters and bunkers is a story about the senselessness of wars and conflicts, and at the same time a story about the turbulent history of Slovenia.

A short documentary film that gives an insight in the formation and early development of the heritage elements of Slovenia. At the same time, it is a condensed presentation of Slovenian ancestors’ lifestyle from their settlement in the sixth century to early modern times.