Danijel Hočevar

Movies

Disappearing
Producer
In southern Carinthia, about ninety percent of all inhabitants spoke Slovenian before 1910. Today it is on average a single digit percentage. In this very personal essay documentary, Andrina Mračnikar formulates a political urgency: What happens when one's mother tongue is taken away in everyday life. What must politicians do to counteract the disappearance of a language whose protection is enshrined in the Austrian constitution.
Small Body
Producer
A young woman in early-1900s Italy searches for a mystical sanctuary where her stillborn child can be brought back to life long enough to be baptized.
Reconciliation
Producer
A 19-year-old woman is killed by a bullet intended for her father in the tragic culmination of a bitter family feud between her father and his cousin, who is now imprisoned for murder. Or is her death just another twist in a saga of blood revenge? In the Albanian mountains, the ancient tribal law Kanun rules, and even though the killer is behind bars, the last word in the case has not been spoken. Religious and legal authorities - like the families involved - have their own powerful and conflicting interests in the controversial law, which is a taboo both in church and modern society. The question, however, is if the young woman’s father can find the faith to not only forgive his cousin, but also reconcile himself with him and break the vicious circle once and for all? Marija Zidar’s epic drama was filmed over 5 years in an obstinate patriarchal world, on the threshold of modern times. A mountain western from the old world, from the stuff of antique tragedies.
Father
Producer
Nikola’s children are taken away from him after social services decide that he is too poor to provide them with a decent living environment. He sets off on foot to lodge a complaint in Belgrade.
Half-Sister
Producer
Half-sisters from a small coastal town who were never that close are forced by circumstance to share a flat in Ljubljana.
God Exists, Her Name Is Petrunya
Producer
In Stip, a small town in Macedonia, every January the local priest throws a wooden cross into the river and hundreds of men dive after it. Good fortune and prosperity are guaranteed to the man who retrieves it. This time, Petrunya dives into the water on a whim and manages to grab the cross before the others. Her competitors are furious - how dare a woman take part in their ritual? All hell breaks loose, but Petrunya holds her ground. She won her cross and will not give it up.
My Last Year as a Loser
Producer
Špela graduated in Art History and has never had a steady job. Unlike her two best friends, who have moved out of Slovenia years ago with no plans to return, she is determined to stay in Ljubljana. When even her longtime boyfriend gets a job abroad she moves back in with her parents and her grandma. But Špela wants to grow up and cut the cord instead of delaying her already well overdue adulthood any longer.
Every Good Story Is a Love Story
Producer
A film about a theatre performance and four very notable people behind it: writer and director D. Jovanović, actress M. Zupančič and actors R. Polič and B. Cavazza. This is a story of a love triangle and of a multi-layered, entirely overt intertwining of protagonists’ public artistic personas and their personal lives. The film documents a 4-month process of the making of a theatre piece from the first rehearsal to the opening night, at the same time uncovering the intimate lives of the artists and telling a universal story of the relationship between the real and the imagined, a story of personal and public perceptions of art.
Ulay
Producer
Ulay is a conceptual artist whose photography pushed boundaries, and whose love affair with Marina Abramovic produced some of the best pieces of performance art. Diagnosed with cancer shortly after agreeing to film the documentary, Ulay's illness informs Project Cancer, which is part-retrospective, part-visual document of the year he believed could be the last of his extraordinary life.
The Woman Who Brushed Off Her Tears
Producer
After her son's tragic death, Helena abducts her employee, Lucian, and travels with him and her husband to scatter her son's ashes in Macedonia. Meanwhile, Lucian's lover struggles to provide for their son and break free from her dictatorial father.
The State of Shock
Producer
Set in socialist Yugoslavia in 1986, a humble and diligent factory worker falls into a 10-year shock right at his working place. He wakes up from coma in hospital in 1996 capitalist Slovenia, only to find out that he's left without job as being redundant.
Good Night, Missy
Producer
Hannah and Sam are young, have a house, a lovely daughter, Anja, and well paid work. However, their comfortable family routine is thrown into emotional turmoil. When Hannah realizes Sam has an affair with a young female colleague, she packs her suitcase and returns to her mother. She reunites with her ex-flame Leo, from her student years hoping it will help her to move on, but discovers that Leo is a philanderer. Hannah makes a hard choice.
House D
Producer
Architecture is not a static but a dynamic, living thing. Similarly film is highly suited to represent and experience architectures as spaces, as stages for human encounter and interaction. In this series of short films architecture becomes animated, even transformed, with social input. Similarly it serves to animate its viewers/occupants -- architecture as stage and actor both. (Good) built projects in Slovenia generally follow a well-thought and focused approach and execution. They are, relatively speaking, of modest size. They are small not in scale nor ambition -- but small as in contained, disciplined, intelligent and specifically responsive. With room for a smile.
The Alexandrian Women
Production Director
Young mothers and sometimes also their daughters have vastly travelled from Vipavska valley to Egypt in 20th century. Their families were poor and needed money. So they went to Alexandria and worked as wet nurses and helpers for wealthier people. They often left their own kids alone with their fathers, only taking care for them with gifts and money. Many never returned and even if they did, they were not well accepted.
Going Our Way
Producer
Film is talking about scouts who spend their free time in nature. Aleks is camping near Soča river together with his friends. Starešina, the scouting leader is taking everything too serious and that cause a lot of problems. And boys are a lot more interested in girls than camp. The movie was filmed in ideal Triglav National Park in Slovenia.
Slovenian Girl
Producer
Aleksandra is a student from Krško, a small town in Slovenia. She has a plan to conquer the world. Working as a prostitute, her life is heading to where she wants it, but an accidental death has her wrestling with new feelings of fear, loneliness, confusion and responsibility
The World Is Big and Salvation Lurks Around the Corner
Producer
The story of Alex, who, with the help of his charismatic grandfather, embarks on a journey in search of his real self.
The Border Post
Producer
At a small border-post on the Yugoslav-Albanian border, yet another generation of soldiers suffering the usual amount of boredom awaits the end of their service, counting days to the moment when they should take their uniforms off for good. It is the spring of 1987 and the thought never even crosses their mind that they would, in fact, put them back on quite soon and go to war.
Ruins
Producer
A successful stage director plans to put on an outdoor production of a previously unknown play by a famous writer, but is haunted by his past in the form of the actors and crew with whom he has to work.
Labour Equals Freedom
Producer
Peter is in his early forties and until recently he worked in a factory, but after Slovenia's integration into the European Union, the factory closed down and Peter and his colleagues have been made redundant. Slowly but surely, he is losing self-confidence and self-esteem.
The Red Colored Grey Truck
Producer
Belgrade, the summer of 1991. Yugoslavia is falling apart. Gavran can't get a driving licence because he is color blind. He is a rural Bosnian introvert obsessed with trucks. So, as soon as he is released from prison, he steals a truck to go on a joyride. Suzana, a city girl, discovers she is pregnant, but until she's due for an abortion, she decides to go to Dubrovnik. She hitchikes and Gavran almost runs her over. She is unhurt, but she blackmails him to take her to Dubrovnik. Two people from different worlds, equally removed from the real one. For him she is the first woman he can talk to; for her he is just another idiot to add to the long list of them that she has so far compiled. But the pressure of danger and the intimations of war force them together. The world about them has become so absurd that they seem to each other the only sober people left.
Suburbs
Co-Producer
After his wife's death a middle-aged man and his friends become increasingly agitated and violent towards the suburbs they inhabit.
Stereotype
Producer
Marjetka is living ten years with Maks, who is a painter, and an uncompromising conceptual artist. At first, it seemed different: Max was witty, charming, talented and promising, so he hired Marjetka to reach fame and success. "Well, it is funny today, but fame and money is not coming out of nowhere". The film has a poet, Srecko, Max's mother, an opera singer, and Vilma, Marjetka's friend. In short, the artists themselves, or as Max says from his point of view: "Slovenian - Country artists". And when Marjetka a few days after her 30th birthday, full of doubts about this way of life, which is not to her liking, she realizes that Maks is not only an irreversible bohemian, but also a slacker and sarcastic, she decides to change her life. And this is very radical. Rather than leave it to him.
Remington
Executive Producer
Oscar runs away from prison only five days before release. He droves off with his girlfriend to Split in a red car, so they could go to Italy and then to America. They meet photographer Jan, and thus their final destination seems every so closer. As police is on their trail, Oscar starts to suspect Jan...
The Fatal Telephone
Producer
Experimental feature about two young men trying to make a film.
Hidden People
Producer
Guti (35, Slovenian) and Sig (50, Icelander) wake up naked and handcuffed to one another on a riverbank near Ljubljana. Sig suffers from memory loss, while Guti recalls a fight with skinheads Sid drunkenly participated in and Guti tried peacefully to intervene in. Sig has no passport or any clue about his identity—the skinheads have taken everything he owned. Guti is trying to build a new home for himself on a river raft after losing his house to the bank and his life to his ex-wife. He introduces Sig to his friends—suburban misfits, who remind Sig of a legend of the hidden people.