At the opening ceremony of the festival, on Monday at Kinudvor, the Pink Dragon Award for the best Slovenian short film was already presented: it was awarded to Petra Hrovatin for her film Inbetween, a personal narrative about the beginnings of the awareness of a non-binary sexual identity.
On Sunday, two more Pink Dragons were awarded at the Slovenian Cinematheque. The international jury, composed of Barbara Timm, a selector from the related Freiburg festival, Cosimo Santoro, a film producer and distributor from Bari, and Jani Kuštrin from Nova Gorica, also an annual jury member at the Venice Film Festival, chose between the feature films and selected the Filipino-Canadian-American co-production Asog, by Seán Devlin.
The jury said the following about their choice:
"We decided to award a film that surprised us for its ability to combine radical and innovative language with the tradition of cinema coming from this country, and in which the main character is a strong transgender woman who empowers other people to fight against social and political oppressors."
This witty combination of a journey film and a docudrama set in the aftermath of a devastating typhoon is a gem of trans filmography. We follow Rey, a non-binary Filipino schoolteacher, on her way to an expensive competition. During her adventure, she meets Filipinos coping with the effects of climate change, including the inhabitants of Sicogon Island, whose land was stolen in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan. The film has won more than ten international awards!
The audience judged all feature films, both fiction and documentaries. Two documentaries earned very high ratings, one about the development of the lesbian community on the island of Lesbos, Lesbia, and the other If I Die, It'll be of Joy (Si je meurs, ce sera de joie), in which a group of older women activists reflect on love and sex in old age. The highest-rated was an Austrian romantic comedy What It Feels Like, directed by Kat Rohrer, who was also a guest at the festival.
Marie Theres, a successful doctor, had special plans for her 20th wedding anniversary. Did her husband Alexander have to break up with her that very night? Yes, because he wants to be happier, he wants to be free and he no longer wants her in his life. After such an unpleasant turn of events, Marie Theres does what any sensible woman in her position would do: she goes for a drink, stumbles upon Bigi's queer bar and meets Fa. A sweet and witty romantic comedy about two middle-aged women who refuse to let life sideline them.