In the final period of Creative Europe (2021–2027), as the new funding programme for the cultural and creative sectors – AgoraEU – is being shaped at the European level, this is an opportune moment to reflect on the experiences, achievements, and shifts that international collaboration in European projects has brought to Slovenian organisations. The Creative Europe Ambassadors, coming from various organisations and creative sectors but united by their commitment to active engagement in the international arena, have generously shared their extensive experience and perspectives. These varied contributions highlight the specific trajectories of individual organisations while also offering deeper insights into the development of artistic practices, institutional models, and the cultural ecosystem in Slovenia.
Nosorogi and the Alchemy of Transformation Shaping Stories, People, and Communities
Over the course of your career, you have taken part in renowned training programmes such as EAVE and Atelier Ludwigsburg-Paris, both supported by Creative Europe – MEDIA. How have these experiences shaped your professional development?
MEDIA has been – and continues to be – fundamental to the European film landscape for the past thirty years, and therefore to an entire generation of professionals, myself included. When it comes to film, I am 100% a child of Creative Europe. Without it, I would probably be a different person, and in any case a very different producer.
My professional formation in film was supported entirely by the Creative Europe – MEDIA, from higher education to professional experience: my studies in international co-productions within the Atelier Ludwigsburg-Paris programme, the subsequent Next Wave postgraduate programme at the Berlin film school DFFB, and the intensive EAVE programmes Producers Workshop and Ties That Bind, which connects the European and Asian film industries. Beyond that, I have taken part in a wide range of shorter training programmes, including the Green Production Lab for sustainable film practices and FeatureLab for feature film development (both organised by TorinoFilmLab), the Emerging Producers project in Jihlava, lab for emerging producers at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, seminars organised by the Erich Pommer Institut, etc.
During my first ten years working in film production, I was constantly on the move – attending every training course, programme, and industry event imaginable. While some of the initiatives I mentioned had already been established, I joined several others in their early years, and in some cases their very first edition, which allowed me to follow the development of these platforms from the outset. Over that period, I gained a deep understanding of the European film landscape, its key structures, and the industry experts who shape and represent it. Almost everything I know and understand today about contemporary European cinema stems from those experiences, as well as from making films, particularly international co-productions, most of which also received MEDIA support during their development phase.
NOSOROGI functions as a creative research platform that goes beyond conventional production models. How would you describe your approach to project development, and what most distinguishes it from more traditional film production?
To be honest, I doubt that our commitment to research and creativity differs greatly from that of many other small outfits working in the field of creative auteur cinema – outfits driven less by the prospect of commercially successful products than by creative aspirations. Anyone who is more inclined to question than to rely on tried-and-tested formulas, anyone who begins from a position of not knowing and is constantly learning, who remains open to being changed by the process – even if they ultimately discover nothing radically new – is almost certainly destined for an unstable and unpredictable professional path.
At the same time, project development is, at least in Europe, a core part of filmmaking and one that is both systemically and systematically supported. At NOSOROGI, we devote a great deal of attention to development and genuinely enjoy this work, but in truth all filmmakers operating within the established system are encouraged to engage in in-depth project development. Some explore more deeply and for longer, while others feel less at home in this part of the process, but all of us are searching for something of value that can also resonate with audiences. The real question is whether anything truly unconventional is even possible within the frameworks and dependencies – above all financial and distribution-related – in which we find ourselves. If we were genuinely unconventional and radical, we would need to look beyond those production and distribution models altogether. But the simple arithmetic of audience reach does not allow us that luxury.
Not long ago, I read an interview with Kristen Stewart about how impossible it has become to work with genuine creativity and originality within today’s established production system calibrated by late capitalism. I can relate intimately to that kind of punk energy, and yet I also understand how naïve it would be to build a fixed identity around such sentiments – any such identity could only ever be performative. A few years ago, I spent some time studying degrowth and ecological economics at the University of Barcelona. I understand well the difference between utopia and strategic, organised action within the system in pursuit of a future in which we have freed ourselves from capitalism’s stranglehold and the emptiness it produces. Rather than focusing on marketising our identities, what sees us through this in-between time is the disciplined work of maintaining our resolve and our sensitivity. It seems to me worth coming to terms with the fact that, even within creative environments where we often believe our very existence depends on our uniqueness, we are separated from one another by only the smallest of differences – so slight that one would need a magnifying glass to notice them.
If I look at NOSOROGI through such a lens, what perhaps distinguishes us most is that our productions tend to take considerably longer than average. This probably stems from personal dynamics and preferences – my own, as well as those of the people who have shaped our studio over the past fifteen years. Personally, I am more interested in the process itself than in the finished product – in the alchemy of transformation through which not only stories and films are shaped, but people and community too. It is only possible to devote oneself fully to such processes if the set-up one works within is not run like a production line. Ours certainly is not. In fact, it would be difficult to be any smaller and less driven by calculation than we are. Even our tiny office only has room for two. It is not the most comfortable arrangement, but it serves as a constant reminder of just how radically small and vulnerable we are, and why we have chosen to work this way. I like to be present in every creative process. That is what inspires me and brings me joy as a producer, and it is not something I am willing to give up.
In your work you emphasise collectivity, solidarity, and intergenerational collaboration. Do such ways of working already establish certain ethical standards? Where do you see the greatest need today for their formalisation?
Our collective’s commitment to these values stems largely from my own nature and certain personal circumstances, which also guide the choice of people I am able and happy to work with. My colleagues – and at the moment we have a wonderful team at the studio – respond to this underlying thread, and together we shape a collective dynamic that underpins a particular way of working.
Judging by historical precedent, I do not fit the “right” producer profile. Not only am I of the “wrong” gender, and not particularly drawn to money or power, but I am also too sensitive for many of the normalised aspects of traditional production practice. On the other hand, the producer profile we have inherited from previous generations is, given the challenges of the present moment, outdated – or at least insufficient. While this profile of people may once have been capable of providing society with dreams and entertainment, it is now clear that the mainstream film industry has long discriminated against entire sections of society. In doing so, it has established standards that come nowhere near reflecting the full diversity of lived realities, while also generating a host of unhealthy side effects: the cult of celebrity, the disproportionate glorification of individual credit over collective work, and neurotic, high-pressure working dynamics that pave the way for the exploitation of both people and natural resources.
Sensitivity, incapacity, even limitation – if you will – are, in my view, of extraordinary evolutionary significance today. The world and the order we have known for decades are changing radically; the institutions and the values they have upheld, and which we have long taken for granted, are fracturing. Those who bear the brunt of the world’s fractures most painfully, and who feel its dislocations most deeply, are the clearest indicators of its true condition. I firmly believe that we, as a community, are only as strong as our weakest member, and that everything which pretends to strength while profiting at another’s expense will, sooner or later, collapse in on itself. I believe that only the standardisation of solidarity – through which different, more compassionate ways of being together can be established – will enable us to preserve a functional community.
Sustainability is central to your work, both in terms of content and production. How do you put sustainability principles into practice, and what challenges do you see in the Slovenian and European context?
What interests me most at the moment is exploring sustainable practices in film sector on a personal and relational, social, level. A colleague from the industry recently asked me why I suddenly seem more interested in mental health and ethics than in so-called green production practices – hadn’t I spent several years focused on environmental issues? Am I perhaps simply following the wind?
To summarise my understanding of the history of sustainability concept in filmmaking: from the end of the first decade of the new millennium up to the pandemic, awareness of the film industry’s environmental impact became firmly established. At the beginning of the following decade, green production emerged as one of the most prominent ideological directives – alongside so-called gender quotas – within organised filmmaking, supported by the first institutional strategies and carbon calculators designed specifically for film productions. Major environmental disasters, the pandemic, and the disruption that followed propelled green production to the level of a buzzword for several years. The issue left a particularly strong mark on the European production community, but it also triggered an unfortunate boomerang effect.
When the industry was fully back up and running several years after the pandemic, the pressure on producers was greater than ever. The consequences of the system’s abrupt interruption and the losses that followed had left the sector under enormous strain. Environmental concerns and green production practices, now required by the many bureaucratic wheels of European film sector, descended on already overstretched producers as yet another administrative burden, and as a result became the object of growing indifference and, at times, even sarcasm. The system appears to have automated concern for the environment while rather clumsily ignoring concern for the workers expected to put it into practice. I think the producing community – and the film community more broadly – sensed, on some level, that this pressure was hypocritical, or at least disproportionate, and responded, more or less consciously, with passivity or a pragmatic going-through-the-motions.
I see this as a particular failure of the way our world manages crises: it identified the right problems, but was unable to translate its responses into practice within large systems in a balanced or sufficiently motivating way. A basic operational principle was overlooked: in order to help others, you must first help yourself. Just as nature cannot be understood in isolation from humanity, sustainable practices cannot be confined to the environment alone. Exhausted, anxious, and unhappy film workers, for whose wellbeing no mechanism seems to care, cannot be expected to take care of everything – and the environment on top of that.
During Cannes Film Festival 2026, an EAVE working group presented a report Producing Under Pressure: Producer Care and Sustainable Practice at a roundtable discussion, drawing on the growing number of burnout cases within the producing community. In what I read as an almost revolutionary foreword, EAVE’s director, Tina Trapp, wrote that caring for the mental health of producers is as much a systemic responsibility as it is an individual one. It was precisely this thought – one I had arrived at intuitively myself – that guided my strategic shift away from learning about green production practices for environmental protection towards questions of mental health, the impact of working conditions on the wellbeing of film workers, and issues of inclusion, representation, solidarity, and ethical principles.
I am deeply grateful for two significant opportunities that currently allow me to explore these issues and deepen my understanding, and through which I hope to return at least some of what I discover and learn to the community. At the end of 2025, I received a research grant from the Ministry of Culture to investigate the state of mental health in the Slovenian film sector. Since spring 2026, under the auspices of the Slovenian Film Centre, I have also been coordinating a project to develop ethical standards – the first document to address professional ethics within the Slovenian film industry.
I will almost certainly never be an expert in mental health – for that I would need to be a qualified therapist. What I can imagine, however, is contributing to the empowerment of the community in this area. I can continue to educate myself and try to lead by example. I can support initiatives aimed at systemic improvements and help open conversations about mental health and related issues – first within my immediate professional family, that is, in our studio and on our productions, and then with colleagues working across the Slovenian film sector. I think the community has matured enough to have these conversations; they require a little more courage and honesty, perhaps, but they are essential if we are to reach consensus on the approaches that will shape a safer and less stressful environment in the future – one in which we can express ourselves more freely and set our boundaries with greater confidence.
Your projects weave together a research-driven approach, socially engaged themes, and a distinctive authorial voice. How do you see the role of film at a time of profound social and environmental change?
Since childhood, watching films – especially in the cinema – has meant two things to me. For a couple of hours, I could step away from my own thoughts and from the world around me, and at the same time encounter new and endlessly varied worlds, along with people I could never have met anywhere else. Whenever I want to escape from myself or from the world, the cinema still feels like one of the safest places I can be.
I doubt that the times we live in – and we are living through very interesting times, not necessarily in a positive sense – can fundamentally alter the meaning, role, or value of film. For me, film is as valuable in the most carefree of periods as it is in the most stressful of times. I am certain I am not alone in this. Film can plant a seed of unease in the most complacent audience in a privileged environment, and offer a small measure of comfort to the unhappiest soul in the midst of devastation. It can entertain, inspire, or broaden perspectives. It can simply pass us by and come to nothing, we can sleep through it and dream strange dreams. Because it exists in infinite plurality, film is not a static or fixed quality. Its meaning, value, and impact can adapt to every circumstance and every era, as long as it remains accessible – or rather, the right infrastructure for it needs to exist to make that possible.
Perhaps it would be more interesting to talk about the changing value of viewing spaces and the social dimension of the cinematic experience – that is, about the question of cinema itself. How do we promote cinema in our restless, image-saturated times? How do we preserve it? How do we engage young and new audiences? The question of how film viewing is organised seems both more complex and more subject to the vicissitudes of the age. Film itself, however, is not a question. Nor is it a solution – if anything, it is a symptom. Rather than believing that film might bring about anything revolutionary in society, I think that society would quickly fall apart without it.
See also
- We invite you to read on; contributions from other ambassadors are available here.
- Nosorogi
- Creative Europe Desk Slovenia
External links
About the article
The interview was prepared by Nika Mušič in May 2026 in the framework of the public procurement “Development and upgrade of information portals of the Ministry of Culture for the transition to the eKultura platform” in which Motovila Institute collaborates as a partner with Ljudmila Art and Science Laboratory.