A Slovenian literary giant wrote his life before he lived it—animation bleeds into reality.
Ivan Cankar experienced many things only after he has written about them. In the film, this link between his writing and his private life is depicted by live-action and animated scenes that draw exclusively on the writer’s works and letters to his loved ones. For an entire decade, he lived with the Löffler family in Vienna, where he wrote most of his impressive oeuvre. First, he grew very close to the lady of the house, then to her adolescent daughter Steffi. Back in Ljubljana, he got involved with several girls there, an attentive lover of a cheerful nature, accessible and highly intelligent. His popular public lectures reveal him as a passionate social democrat.
Direction
Live-action and animation merge like memory and imagination.
Writing
Adapted from actual letters—intimate, self-aware, devastating.
Costume
Vienna decadence meets Ljubljana restraint.
Director
Amir Muratović
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Cankar is Slovenia's most translated writer; this film was made for the 100th anniversary of his death.
The Löffler family actually existed; Cankar's decade with them remains one of literary history's most documented 'patronage' arrangements.
SI
