The film about Slovenian speakers in Austria received the Audience Award at the Graz Film Festival
STAApril 11, 2022 – Verschwinden (Disappearing), The documentary by Andrina Mračnikar, an Austrian director and screenwriter of Slovene descent, about the disappearance of the Slovene language from everyday life in Carinthia, received the Audience Award at the Diagonale Film Festival in Graz.
The director of the feature-length documentary also received a check for € 3,000 from the Austrian newspaper Kleine Zeitung.
The film, which was screened at the festival on Saturday and Sunday, is “a call against resignation and courageous political action”, according to the film’s presentation in the festival’s catalog.
It has been established that before 1910, about 90% of the population of present-day Austrian Carinthia spoke Slovene, and the majority exclusively Slovene. Today, for example, only 5% of people in Keutschach / Hodiše speak Slovene.
“This decline is the result of more than a century of discrimination fueled by nationalism … and ignorance of German-speaking society and politics.”
In interviews with Slovene families in the area, the director portrays the image of “persecution, deportation, violence, insidious hostility and bureaucratic obstacles” that have led many Carinthian Slovenes to abandon their own language.
Mračnikar, born in 1981 in Hallein, grew up in Carinthia and studied at the Academy of Theater, Radio, Film and Television in Ljubljana and directing and screenwriting at the Vienna Film Academy. He has been living in Vienna for the last 20 years.
She has made two more documentaries – Andri 1924-1944 (2003) and Der Kärntner spricht Deutsch (2007) and one feature film – Ma Folie (2015), which has received numerous awards and recognitions.
The award for best film at the Diagonale festival went to Austrian director Ulrich Seidl for Rimini, and Sabine Derflinger received the award for best documentary for a film about German journalist and feminist Alice Schwarzer.
There is no website or trailer yet, however The documentary’s Facebook page is here to learn more about projections