Bernd Buder – Friend of Slovenian Film
This year, we are delighted to welcome Bernd Buder as the festival’s guest of honour and Friend of Slovenian Film. A German film curator, programmer, lecturer and film journalist, Buder has served as programme director of the Cottbus Film Festival since 2015, one of Germany’s leading festivals dedicated to the cinemas of Central and Eastern Europe.
Buder has been closely connected with Slovenian cinema for almost three decades, ever since its “new wave” of the late 1990s. Cottbus was among the festivals to provide an early international platform for films by Andrej Košak, Igor Šterk, Damjan Kozole, Janez Burger and Jan Cvitkovič, among others. Buder also regularly promotes Slovenian cinema in Germany: he is a curator and advisor to SloVision – Slovenian Film Days in Berlin, organised by SKICA Berlin and the Slovenian Film Centre. In 2023, he curated the extensive programme Not a Retrospective: Slovenian Cinema at Berlin’s Arsenal cinema, bringing together classics of Slovenian cinema and contemporary productions.
In a text for the festival catalogue reflecting on his relationship with Slovenia and Slovenian cinema, Buder wrote: “That’s how Slovenia became /…/ a place where my own experiences were both reflected and refracted, and where there was so much to discover—above all, contacts with wonderful people in a diverse film scene. A scene as diverse as the country itself: Europe under a magnifying glass, nearly every kind of landscape and vastly different cultural influences packed into a relatively small area between the Karst and the Karawanken, history caught between Central and Southeastern Europe, and yet always permeable and open to dialogue. /…/ Slovenian filmmakers always look quite closely and discover what is actually completely normal: namely, that there is very little that is actually normal. This creative bent to portray complexity in a straightforward way carries those philosophical undertones for which Slovenia is renowned, but it’s usually also quite entertaining. And in doing so, it is deeply inclusive and diverse, because it either points beyond the confines of one’s own perspective or makes painfully clear just how confining that perspective is.”
By naming Bernd Buder a Friend of Slovenian Film, the festival pays tribute to his many years of engagement with Slovenian cinema and his contribution to presenting and promoting it internationally. We are honoured and delighted to welcome him to Portorož this year.