In southern Carinthia, about ninety percent of all inhabitants spoke Slovenian before 1910. Today it is on average a single digit percentage. In this very personal essay documentary, Andrina Mračnikar formulates a political urgency: What happens when one's mother tongue is taken away in everyday life. What must politicians do to counteract the disappearance of a language whose protection is enshrined in the Austrian constitution.
Direction
Mračnikar turns constitutional law into gut-punch personal testimony.
Editing
Weaves archival silence with present-day absences masterfully.
Director
Andrina Mračnikar
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Carinthian Slovenes faced forced Germanization programs from the 19th century through the 1950s, including corporal punishment for children speaking their mother tongue in schools.
Mračnikar's use of untranslated Slovenian dialogue forces monolingual viewers into the same disorientation her subjects experience daily—brutal formal choice.
AT
