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We've Never Been to Venice has been to Estoril

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Cineuropa

The fifth day of competition at the Estoril Film Festival featured Italian title Mid-August Lunch [trailer] by Gianni di Gregorio and Slovenian film We've Never Been to Venice, the feature debut of Blaz Kutin.

The latter takes viewers through just over 24 hours in the lives of Grega (Aljosa Ternovsek), his wife Masha (Iva Krajnc, who is also Ternovsek’s real-life wife) and Tone (Peter Ternosvek), Grega’s elderly father.

Tone returns to Ljubljana from Germany, where he has been living for some time, to his son’s house, the day after Grega and Masha lost their only son. Tone manages to drag the couple out of the house but what was meant to be a short outing for a breah of fresh air turns into a daytrip over the border, to Venice.

Masha and Grega are going through a painful moment, during which they cannot and do not want to speak to anyone, not even Tone, who only irritates them. They have closed themselves off in a microcosm and seem to share the same emotions even without speaking.

The viewer never knows what happened before, or what will happen next. The atmosphere is inert. Except for short outbursts of anger, laughter or tears on the canal in Venice, the two main characters seems apathetic towards everything, as if they have not yet realized what has happened.

With its slow and solemn rhythm, made up of mostly of fixed shots, We've Never Been to Venice is a low-budget film produced by VPK, on which the professional cast agreed to work for free. The film does not yet have a distributor but the director hopes it might come out in Slovenia this coming spring.

Elisa Cimino Cineuropa.org