2009 - university diploma in Film and TV directing Academy for Theatre, Radio, Film and Television (AGRFT) / Slovenia

2016 - diploma in Film directing (post-graduate) Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin (DFFB) / Germany

Résumé of candidate’s background and/or studies:

I was born in 1984 in Nova Gorica, a small town on the border between Italy and Slovenia (former Yugoslavia). Part of my family originates from the countryside region Brda-Colio, which lies about 20 km north of my hometown. The region is famous for its excellent climate and is thriving on wine and fruit production. Growing up, I was influenced by two different mindsets; on one side by an intellectual bourgeois culture and on the other, by the simpler, close to the nature countryside mindset. Both of these worlds shaped my way of perceiving the world around me as well as the way I look through the camera. I started doing still photography at the age of 14 and have continued to do so until I started studying. After high school, I enrolled at the Slovenian national film school AGRFT to study film directing. During my study years, I shot three short films (all were shot on film) and worked in theatre as a video designer. In 2006, I was a guest student at the Centro sperimentale di cinematografia in Rome. It was during my stay there that I started visiting classes for cinematographers. In 2011, I started my postgraduate studies at the DFFB film school in Berlin. There, I continued to study directing, but have started following cinematography courses more regularly and with an even bigger interest. Since then, I have been working as a director and as a cinematographer. This year, I finished my debut fiction film as a director (Stories from the Chetsnut Woods) and my first feature film as a cinematographer (Oroslan directed by Matjaž Ivanišin). Besides working in film, I have in the last 15 years spent a considerable amount of time researching the old and autochthonous fruit varieties in the Goriska region. This research is complied in two books, in which I presented all the known varieties from the region, and personal stories (memories, anecdote, tales) connected with them. Apart from this, I have planted a fruit orchard to collect and preserve all these varieties. The orchard is today open for public and has been recently appointed as one of the possible elements of the next Slovenian application for the Unesco’s natural world heritage. In recent years, I started feeling an increasing need to search for new, perhaps interdisciplinary art forms and extended means of creative expression, mostly due to the fact that I would like to research, express and share with others the element of nature and light that inspires me on a daily level. These, next to my personal appreciation of French cinema culture, are the main reasons for applying to Le Fresnoy.