Brane Gruber
The stories narrated by the film bring together individuals all over the world, spanning over sixty years and thus symbolically covering the approximate period of a single human life. Each of the stories is based on true accounts and events, summed up from newspaper articles, statements, and media announcements. Through internal monologues the collage makes up a whole which transcends any individual story.
Marko is 40 years old and still lives with his mother. His life is settled between work and home. His colleague Ajda tries to approach him, but without success. Marko always returns to his mother, without whom he cannot manage. And when it already seems like he will never separate from his mom, she takes matters into her own hands. Will Marko finally grow up?
Val Sebald is an author who comes to the Island to retreat from life and land. There he lives among the islanders and his favorite women, the heroines of various maritime novels. His relations with actual women from his past are reduced to messages in bottles that he ceremonially throws into the water. Val brings the real and imaginary people together into a place he is comfortable with, while his real life also becomes more and more one with the sea and the underwater world.
Pero is a professional funeral speaker in a small Slovenian town. His unique gift is to make every funeral that extra bit special. Pero just can't help turning his eulogies into witty personal confessions that bring the grieving crowd to tears for all the wrong reasons.
A singing group, trying to escape war-torn Sarajevo, has to wait for a tunnel to clear. While they wait, a cow has difficulty giving birth because of the "torsion" affecting its calf (i.e., it's in a twisted position inside). Fortunately, one of the choir members has some veterinary training, and with help from the chorus to drown out the sounds of war, the cow gives birth.
Miha, a poet whom no one takes seriously, earns his living by writing cheap advertising slogans. This outsider poet of the new age gets commissioned to write an ode to the famous Slovene poet Preseren, for the occasion of the national celebration, due to the 200th anniversary of Preseren's birth. Who was Preseren, what did he drink and what sort of woman did he like? A comedy can begin.
Ivan is released a day early from a treatment programme for alcoholics due to a doctors' strike. He returns to his wife Sonja and his sixteen year old son Robi. The first afternoon he spends at home is very pleasant. The next morning Sonja sends Ivan to a shop to get bread and milk. On the way back Ivan runs into Armando, his high school classmate, and through their conversation at a bar, Ivan finds out that long before Sonja became his wife, Armando spent a night with her. Ivan has his first drop of the hard stuff...Kruh in mleko is a bitter-sweet tale of loneliness, estrangement and the glowing embers of love, where there once used to be a fire.
A bald-headed professor Rozina, with the help of his brother and female assistant, for many years tests all possible chemical compounds and solutions that could accelerate the growth of hair cells. Meanwhile, in the far galactic kingdom, at the edge of the Andromeda nebulae, King Alfred caught his son smoking cigarettes. A single poof of that substance can be fatal, since gasified tobacco causes anti-evolution process in the population of this kingdom. Fortunately, the inhaled dose was so small that the prince devolves only to the level of a bull. As a punishment, father King sends him to Earth, which is famous for the worst grass in the galaxy, so he could socialize well and come to his senses. Grizel supposed to seven long years, to come to his senses and to socialize better. Coincidentally or not, the prince-bull finds himself in the laboratory of professor Rozina, where he becomes the subject of professor's research. And here the story of evolution and anti-evolution interweave.
An immigrant worker from Bosnia falls in love with the actress Nastassia Kinski. To be able to approach her, he has to become famous himself. That's why he sets off on a journey to fame in a black comedy with a twist in its tale.
The city of Maribor before the Second World War, and Maribor after its liberation mark the period in which the film Cafe Astoria is set. The story relates with a gentle melancholy and a slight irony the lives of a middle-class family: the cafe owner, his wife and their son. Through their individual destinies we become acquainted with the social and historical background of a by-gone era; the social and national differences of pre-war Maribor, divisions among the wealthy and poor, and nationally minded Slovenes and fanatic Germanophils. The first year after the war introduced the absurd characteristic cruel measures of the so-called revolutionary social transformations in which calamity and coincidence intervene, resulting in events of comic nature, of course, as seen from a safe distance of fifty years.
Old man Repovz recalls experiences of the WWII in an entertaining, comic way rather than tragic. A man breaks his arm to avoid being drafted; the other man shoots fire to scare enemy soldiers; love stories, as well as troubles with forced collectivization took place there. A partisan hero finds out that he lost her fiancee, but somewhat cheers up when his white horse comes back to him...
This film takes place in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia. Matic lives in a large neighborhood of concrete blocks of flats with his mother. As his father is temporarily working in Libya, they live alone. Matics' otherwise monotonous life changes dramatically when he is chosen to feature in a film. At the shooting he meets Milena, a girl his own age whom he begins to like. When the shooting is over, the film company gives him a present, a huge black Newfoundlander. Although his mother is not really pleased about it, Matic brings the dog home. And that is just the beginning of their adventures...
When Dane returns from the army, Vera awaits him at the station, ready to live together with him. Yet beneath the veil of enthusiasm lies anxiety for their future. The couple sets off for the mountain village where Vera's parents live, but find life in the harsh alpine conditions too difficult. They decide to move down into the valley, where they meet a discontented couple whose marriage has been marred by an affair. Vera and Dane also encounter difficulties in their relationship, but the tragic example of the other couple helps them realize that their home lies in the place of their birth - beneath the free skies in the mountains.
Lion, a boy of lion's heart, can't make decision which one of the two girls to chose - tender Mihaela or fatal Marjeta. The girls decide to make choice themselves.
