Documentary on men and their games making waves internationally
Ljubljana, 14 November - Playing Men, a documentary essay about the relationships between men and their games by Matjaž Ivanišin, is making waves in international film waters. Most recently it was screened at the Polish Camerimage festival dedicated to cinematography and will go into regular distribution in France next month.
The documentary tells the story of a director who suddenly faces a serious creative crisis and turns the camera on himself, turning the film "into a playful homage to absurdity", the online film database IMDB describes the film. It takes the form of a travelogue across Croatia, Italy, Slovenia and Turkey.
The film won the award for the best documentary at the Slovenian Film Festival last year, before embarking on a world tour.
Internationally, it premiered at the FID Marseilles festival in June, and has since been screened at around 50 international festivals around the world, including in Argentina, the US and Luxembourg.
It has won 12 awards, the most recent one for best film at the documentary film festival Fünf Seen in Germany in September, the Slovenian Film Centre said.
In addition to the original, lucid and humorous directorial approach to the topic, critics have also praised the documentary's cinematography by Gregor Božič.
The film, a co-production of Slovenia's Nosorogi and Croatia's Restart, will hit another landmark on 4 December.
It will premiere at the Forum des Image cinema in Paris, becoming one of the few Slovenian films to make it to one of the biggest film markets in the world.