This year’s Slovenian Film Festival ended on Saturday with an award ceremony, which also has a historical weight: for the first time in its history, a woman author won the first prize. Urša Menart uses humour and tenderness in the drama My last year as a loser in order to deconstruct the myth of "a hardworking girl" in a world, that does not always welcome educated millennial with open arms.
My last year as a loser is a story about 29-year-old Špela (Eva Jesenovec), who, despite graduating, working ambitions and the desire for independence, finds herself on her parents’ couch. She decides to get herself out of this involuntary prolonged adolescence, however, she slowly realizes that playing by rules does not always work. Did her friends, who moved abroad to pursue their careers, found the right answer? Špela’s initial determination to persist in her home environment is fading.
Portrait of a generation
The film My last year as a loser is a "Generation Film", which holds a mirror and especially portrays a recent grown-up, but slightly lost millennial generation. Many will remember the anthological Burger film called V leru, a portrait of generation X, which was a reflection of a different lifestyle – aimlessness, apathy, and jealousy. "If one mentions Burger when talking about my film, I consider it a great compliment, because V leru is actually one of my favourite Slovenian films after the independence. Of course, both films have very different aesthetics, but in some way, a related theme. It would be interesting to watch them in ten or twenty years because the difference between the generations or environments those generations grew up in. Generations are always determined by the circumstances and circumstances for the youth have changed considerably after the turn of the millennium. I don’t know what Miki (Janez Burger) would say, but I think this could really be a lovely double-bill."