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CONSTRUCTIONS OF POST-YUGOSLAV IDENTITIES IN 
CONTEMPORARY SLOVENIAN FILM
Natalija MAJSOVA
University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Cultural Studies, 
Kardeljeva ploščad 5, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
 e-mail: natalija.majsova@fdv.uni-lj.si
Jasmina ŠEPETAVC
University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Cultural Studies, 
Kardeljeva ploščad 5, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia 
e-mail: jasmina.sepetavc@fdv.uni-lj.si
ABSTRACT
This article discusses the construction of Slovenian national identity in relation to memories 
of the period of Socialist Yugoslavia and its dissolution in the context of contemporary Slove-
nian cinematography (1991–2021). The dynamic of forgetting and remembering Socialism and 
Yugoslav identity is presented with the help of an in-depth analysis of representations, reception 
and contexts of production contexts of select representative cases: Outsider (1997), the most 
popular Slovenian feature film of the 1990s, the mockumentary Houston, We Have a Problem! 
(2016) and the co-production Parada (2011). The article demonstrates that films are repositories 
and re-examiners of national and regional policies, trauma, and reinterpretations of history and 
identities. As such, they are important objects for analyzing processes of remembering memory 
processes and transformations of the attitudes towards the Slovenian recent past.  
Keywords: Slovenian cinema, identity formation, cultural memory, nostalgia, trauma
COSTRUZIONI DI IDENTITÀ POST-JUGOSLAVE NEL CINEMA SLOVENO 
CONTEMPORANEO
SINTESI
Questo articolo discute la costruzione dell’identità nazionale slovena in relazione al ricordo 
del periodo della Jugoslavia socialista e della sua dissoluzione nel contesto della cinematogra-
fia slovena contemporanea (1991–2021). La dinamica dell’oblio e del ricordo del socialismo 
e dell’identità jugoslava è presentata con l’aiuto di un’analisi approfondita delle rappresen-
tazioni, della ricezione e dei contesti di produzione di alcuni casi rappresentativi: Outsider 
(1997), il più popolare lungometraggio sloveno degli anni ‘90, il mockumentary Houston, We 
Have a Problem! (2016) e la coproduzione Parada (2011). L’articolo dimostra che i film sono 
depositari e riesaminatori di politiche nazionali e regionali, traumi e reinterpretazioni della 
storia e delle identità. Come tali, sono oggetti importanti per analizzare i processi di memoria e 
le trasformazioni degli atteggiamenti verso il recente passato sloveno.  
Parole chiave: cinema sloveno, formazione dell’identità, memoria culturale, nostalgia, trauma
Received: 2021-05-22                            DOI 10.19233/AH. 021.18
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INTRODUCTION
The dissolution of Yugoslavia in 1991 resonated forcefully in the domain of film 
production, as the multinational state’s film industry was effectively shut down and 
eventually replaced by smaller, national industries established in the newly founded 
states, such as Slovenia. Brought about by political circumstances, the changes in the 
sphere of film production were not merely organizational, infrastructural, and economic. 
Although the significance of these dimensions of the shift cannot be overlooked, they 
should not be regarded in isolation from the realm of codes, symbols, and narratives. 
To put it in very specific terms: 2021 marks the thirtieth anniversary of Slovenian inde-
pendence, as well as the thirtieth anniversary of the first post-Yugoslav Slovenian film, 
in fact, the first ever Slovenian film hit, Grandma Goes South (Babica gre na jug, 1991, 
dir. Vinci Vogue Anžlovar). In this movie, the titular heroine, a stubborn and lively 
grandma, Sara B. (Majolka Šuklje), decides to escape a retirement home and hitchhike 
her way towards a high-end seaside resort. 
Today, this production is a familiar symbol of “Slovenian cinematography” for many 
generations of local audiences. Since the film’s release, the fascination over the film and 
its heroine has doubtlessly partially stemmed from the production’s double allure. In 
1991, the old lady’s extravagant, adventurous road trip sprinkled with casinos seemed 
to belong to Hollywood, rather than to a new post-socialist film industry plagued by 
perennial financial concerns. At the same time, the film appeared “familiar”, that is 
firmly embedded in what appeared to be a new – ahistorical, but clearly modern and 
non-Yugoslav – Slovenian society. Indeed, this film appears to have functioned as an 
historical agent, in line with the historicist tradition of film analysis, wherein films have 
been “perceived as offering a window on the time during which they were produced” 
(Falbe-Hansen, 2003, 108). Accordingly, film scholars Zdenko Vrdlovec (2014) and 
Peter Stanković (2013) have even described this movie as a fitting metaphor of new 
times full of optimistic anticipation that Slovenians, as a national collective, are headed 
towards their high-end future. 
With thirty years’ hindsight, this verdict can be re-visited from the perspective of 
legacy and (dis)continuity. In academic discussions, Slovenian feature fiction cinema 
has been infamous for its notorious disregard for history in general and for Yugoslav 
history in particular. At the same time, many studies have observed that this does not 
make Slovenian cinema immune to a very specific kind of perspective of the Yugoslav 
past, that is Yugonostalgia (cf. Tomanić Trivundža, 2010; Mazaj, 2011). Admittedly, 
most of these studies date back to the late 2000s and 2010s. However, the recent surge 
of interest in the post-Yugoslav space and its history in the cultural sector in Slovenia, 
including the field of film production, distribution, and reception, begs for a re-inspec-
tion of the relationship between Slovenian film production, the cultural memory of the 
Yugoslav past, and post-Yugoslav national identity. 
Accordingly, the aim of this article is to advance the discussion on Yugosnostalgia 
in Slovenian cinema by investigating it from a diachronic perspective. In doing so, we 
explore how longitudinal analyses of fictional representations, such as those presented 
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in feature films can be deployed to investigate a nation’s cultural memory. In other 
words: in what ways have post-Yugoslav Slovenian films related to Yugoslavia over 
the past three decades of post-Yugoslav film production? What kind of nostalgia for 
Yugoslavia emerges from close readings of a selection of post-1991 Slovenian films, 
and (how) is it recognized and received by Slovenian and international audiences and 
critics? 
In what follows, we first outline the basic structural parameters of the contempo-
rary Slovenian film industry, making a case for the peculiar prevalence of “auteur” 
productions in this national context. Then we position Yugonostalgia in this outlined 
context, relating it to existing literature on nostalgia in post-Yugoslav societies and 
post-Yugoslav cinema. We proceed to analyse Yugonostalgia, provisionally defined as 
an emotively charged dynamic of forgetting and remembering of the regional past, in 
close readings of three select representative cases – The Outsider (Outsider, 1997, dir. 
Andrej Košak), the most popular Slovenian feature film of the 1990s, the mockumen-
tary Houston, We Have a Problem! (2016, dir. Žiga Virc) and the co-production with 
Serbia, The Parade (Parada, 2011, dir. Srđan Dragojević) – each representative of a 
certain political context, and each well received both by professional critics and the 
broader audience.
AUTEUR AS GENRE, AHISTORICITY AS FORM: 
CONTEXT AND CORPUS
Post-1991 Slovenian film production, which comprises over 309 feature films, 
among them 70 co-productions, where Slovenia was a minor co-production partner 
(BSF, 2021), has been heavily marked by the funding capacities and limitations of 
the Slovenian Film Centre – Slovenski filmski center (SFC) (formerly Slovenian 
Film Fund – Slovenski filmski sklad).1 The SFC has the financial capacity to annu-
ally support the production of only a certain number of features (from six to eight 
on average). The often-criticised Centre has specific project evaluation criteria; 
the “artistic merits” of a work account for 50 % of the score, allowing for a great 
degree of subjectivity. As Matic Majcen (2015, 11) has pointed out, Slovenian Film 
Fund/Centre functions as a national “gate-keeper” with a specific set of values and 
the power to decide which films and themes are going to receive financial support. 
Additionally, the prevalent public opinion that Slovenian cinema is “depressing 
and unwatchable” is not conducive to support from the private sector (cf. Stan-
ković, 2020, 82–86). According to Majcen (2015), the Slovenian film market was 
distinctly introverted until 2004, when producers began to make more efforts in 
seeking alternative funding sources. His data also reveals a continual collaboration 
of Slovenian film productions with other former Yugoslav states (most notably 
1 After 1991, the old Yugoslav system of film funding that relied on centralized republic-level producers was 
replaced with a system of independent producers, who apply for funding to state and foreign institutions, 
corporate investors etc. (cf. e. g., Majcen, 2015).  
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Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia), demonstrating that at 
least some of the former Yugoslav film networks remained intact or reopened after 
the disintegration of the Federation. 
All the abovementioned factors have contributed to very specific conditions of 
Slovenian film production, including the considerable – and constant – prevalence of 
so-called “auteur” films over genre productions. At the same time, Majcen’s analysis 
(Majcen, 2015) shows that authorship is not independent of its discursive and institu-
tional contexts. This means, the films were not made in an artistic vacuum, but should 
rather be considered in terms of specific socio-cultural contexts. This begs the question, 
whether and in what ways post-independence auteur works have tackled the Slovenian 
collective and personal post-transitional identities. And how are these identities con-
nected to and influenced by the past?  
In his historical overview of Slovenian film, Peter Stanković (2020) has observed 
that Slovenian films produced in the 1990s are a stylistically and thematically eclectic 
group and that they were – at the time – often unable to grasp their social context. 
However, as Ilija Tomanić Trivundža (2010, 662–663) has noted, these auteur films 
nevertheless share a set of traits, including “ethnicity-based hero and villain, weak main 
characters or determination with destiny”. In accordance with Mette Hjort, Michael 
Fulford, and Scott MacKenzie’s (2000, 4) observation that films are “one of the loci of 
debates about a nation’s governing principles, goals, heritage and history,” the outlined 
common characteristics of Slovenian auteur productions “can also be traced to the sha-
red patterns of collective identification, promoted by cultural and political institutions 
under the banner of national identity” (Tomanić Trivundža, 2010, 663). 
Despite the almost proverbial aversion of Slovenian filmmakers to topics that enga-
ge directly with the nation’s recent history, Tomanić Trivundža’s observation should be 
considered precisely with this past in mind. Accordingly, Martin Pogačar (2000, 134) 
has argued:
Peaking at the time of the collapse and escalating during the Yugoslav Wars, (media) 
nationalism prompted the new states to craft nationally exclusive physical and sym-
bolic landscapes. New landscapes and, increasingly, the mediascapes became the 
central props in the process of discrediting the Yugoslav political system, contesting 
the republic-level entrenchment of power, and in the processes of the installation of 
new regimes and power structures.
In the Slovenian context, significantly less marked by war and violence than the 
other post-Yugoslav states, the process of constituting new regimes entailed remark-
able ignorance for the recent past and attempts to align Slovenian national identity 
with “everything but” the Balkans, and Yugoslavia. This was not only characteristic 
of political discourse, where Slovenia was consistently branded as a Central European 
state, a nation rooted in a specific cultural project, and, bordering on, but not a part of 
the Balkans. Majcen’s analysis of features made between 1995 and 2013 reveals 75% 
of the films were set in the present (corresponding to the time they were made) (2015). 
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Tomanić Trivundža’s analysis of nationally funded Slovenian film production from 
1991 to 2005 reveals a similar trend. He notes that most of the 50 feature films from 
this period position their narratives in a “mythical post-independence time” (Tomanić 
Trivundža, 2010, 671). In turn, Meta Mazaj (2011, 18) concludes that this mythical 
present is visually and narratively preoccupied with the transition, from the barely 
established and somewhat empty “national” to the – presumably European – “suprana-
tional”, which appears equally foreign.
Given that only a few Slovenian films have avoided national temporal amnesia, 
it is important to ask: what form and function does remembering the past take on 
in Slovenian cinema? The films that were made in the first decade after Slovenia’s 
independence rarely dealt with the – both pre-Yugoslav or Yugoslav – past, and 
mostly did so through intimate stories, e. g. The Flying Machine (Zrakoplov, 1993, 
dir. Jure Pervanje); Halgato (1994, dir. Andrej Mlakar). Some engaged with the 
history of the recent fall of Yugoslavia and the following war conflicts, e. g. Felix2 
(1996, dir. Božo Šprajc). Fewer still were able to reflect on their time and place 
and their connection to the past; Stanković highlights Radio.doc (1994, dir. Miran 
Zupanič) in this small group; a production which dealt with the mysterious death 
of a reporter in the 1970s and his daughter’s efforts to solve the case two decades 
later. However, it was not until Outsider that Slovenia got its first film to evoke a 
sense of nostalgia for the Yugoslav past. 
Over the next two decades, Slovenian films were still mostly intimate affairs set 
in the present. Nevertheless, with greater historical distance, nostalgic elements con-
nected to remembering and re-constructing Yugoslavia through fiction and cultural 
appropriation of past times began to creep into cinematic works more often: see, e. 
g., Sweet Dreams (Sladke Sanje, 2001, dir. Sašo Podgoršek); Headnoise (Zvenenje v 
glavi, 2002, dir. Andrej Košak); Tractor, Love and Rock’n’roll (Traktor, ljubezen in 
rock’n’roll, 2008, dir. Branko Đurić); Bread and Circuses (Kruha in Iger, 2012, dir. Kl-
emen Dvornik); Shanghai Gypsy (Šanghaj, 2012, dir. Marko Naberšnik) etc. However, 
we should note that in many of the mentioned films reworking the past was mostly a 
stylistic, less a reflective device of engaging with the regional history. In this regard, 
regional co-productions, works taking on recent events following the disintegration of 
the old regime, proved to be a more fruitful ground to think about reflective engage-
ments with the past. Especially when working in the genre of comedy the films, among 
them No Man’s Land (Ničija Zemlja, 2001, dir. Denis Tanović) and aforementioned The 
Parade, proved to be popular and successful at home and internationally. 
Over the past decade, the increasing amount of regional co-production activities 
has further complicated the question of screening national identities. We argue that 
such co-productions, that is films produced by directors from two or more post-
-Yugoslav states and/or funded by more than one national film production funding 
2 Felix presented an alternative version of the story of how the 1991 Slovenian War for Independence started 
and was at the time heavily criticised as “disgraceful parody of the Slovenian liberation efforts” (Majcen, 
2015, 66). Due to financial conflicts, the film was never released and is currently unavailable.
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body, allow us to investigate the construction of post-Yugoslav national identities 
from a special position. In the production process of these films, attitudes to the 
shared past and to various, often nationally specific historical narratives about this 
past (cf. Pavasović Trošt & Mihajlović Trbovc, 2020), as well as other nationally-
-coded tropes, such as stereotypes about nationals of a certain state are necessarily 
negotiated and adapted by the international production crew. In this sense, such 
co-productions are an especially interesting vantage point to study heritage cinema 
(cf. Jelača, 2016). In the context of this article, the heritage films of interest are 
those concerned with the Yugoslav state and its symbolic imaginary, along with its 
doctrine of brotherhood and unity, multiculturalism, and specific economic model, 
based on workers’ self-management.
METHODOLOGY
Cinematic Mnemonic Agency and a Note on Corpus
As popular-cultural metaphors for future aspirations and diagnoses of traumatic 
presents, films in general, and especially state (co-)funded productions have an 
important role to play in identity-formation processes, not only providing examples 
of how to be or not to be a member of a certain society or acting as witnesses to 
reality, but also due to their commemorative function (cf. Levi, 2007). In film and 
memory studies, feature fiction films have repeatedly been established as sites of 
memory with a certain mnemonic agency, that is as both containers of certain ideas, 
values, and narratives and as enunciations with a certain impact (Erll, 2008; Daković, 
2008; Rigney, 2015). Moreover, following Ann Cvetkovich and Dijana Jelača, we 
propose the analysed films are not just “cultural texts,” essential to the exchange and 
proliferation of myths, ideas, and ideologies, but also “repositories of feelings and 
emotions” (cf. Cvetkovich, 2003, 7; Jelača, 2016).
In this article, we chose to focus on Yugoslav-themed films with significant critical 
acclaim and popular appeal, that is productions that have reached great numbers of 
spectators and have become, or are on their way to becoming canonical productions, 
widely considered as emblematic of Slovenian cinematography of a certain decade. 
Three films from the history of post-1991 Slovenian cinematography stand out accor-
ding to these two criteria, and have thus been selected for closer analysis: allegedly the 
most popular Slovenian film of the 1990s, The Outsider (1997), the most successful 
Slovenian co-production, The Parade (2011), and the most internationally resonant 
Slovenian film of the 2010s, Houston, We Have a Problem! (2016).
The mnemonic agency of a film production emerges at the crossroads of film-
-making as praxis, the film production as text and audiovisual representation, and 
distribution and screening practices that contribute to the cinematic experience and to 
its reception (e. g. Jelača, 2016). In line with this methodological consideration, the 
film analyses below are all equipped with information about the reach of the film in 
question. Furthermore, narrative analyses of each of the featured films, focused on the 
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production’s constructions of societal norms, value hierarchies, and (individual and 
collective) identities are complemented by an analytical overview of the films’ critical 
reception in all available (national, local, international) contexts. 
Yugonostalgia and Slovenian Cinema
Once our sample got narrowed down to three productions, it stood out that all three 
engage with the Yugoslav past in a very positive way, which is easy to label as (Yugo)
nostalgia. While nostalgia for socialism, that is the longing for an idealized version of 
the socialist past (cf. Boym, 2001; Velikonja, 2009) has been very popular with East 
European cultural-studies and media scholars, some reservations have recently been 
raised with regards to its analytical potency. For example, Sabina Mihelj observes:
If one were to judge solely by available research, it would be tempting to conclude 
that post-socialist nostalgia constitutes the most common relationship with the past 
in Eastern Europe. Indeed, one is left with the impression that post-socialist citizens 
have undergone a radical reversal of their relationship with time, suddenly dropping 
their future-oriented, revolutionary sense of time and transforming themselves into 
past-oriented beings filled with a sense of loss or even longing for the bygone era. 
Yet, as soon as we consider the empirical basis of research on nostalgia, it becomes 
apparent that this sense of pervasiveness may, to some extent, be simply a product 
of scholarly investment in the topic. (Mihelj, 2017, 238)
At the same time, Mihelj (2017, 238) notes, “scholarly investment” in post-socialist 
nostalgia reflects a range of various motivations and angles of inquiry, and leads to 
diverse conclusions that are sometimes very difficult to compare: as well as longing 
for one’s own personal past, youth, and a certain socio-political system, nostalgia can 
be seen as popular discontent with the present, or as the effect of political efforts to 
interpret the past in a certain way. This diversity of definitions complicates transna-
tional comparison, as does many researchers’ tendency to focus on in-depth readings 
of a small number of productions, which does not allow for generalizations. While 
sharing many of the concerns raised by Mihelj, we argue that the gap between abundant 
micro case studies of nostalgias (and traumas) related to the Cold War and memories 
of it and scarce transnational analysis of the mediation of these memories can best be 
bridged through a series of studies that aim for the latter goal while not ignoring the 
contribution and insights of the former.
Accordingly, this article builds on existing studies of Slovenian cinema, which have 
noted that Yugonostalgia is perhaps the privileged way in which Slovenian film directors 
engage with the Yugoslav past (cf. Petek, 2010; Tomanić Trivundža, 2010; Stanković, 
2020). These and related studies (e.g. Mazaj, 2011) tend to align this loving longing 
for the socialist past characteristic of post-1991 Slovenian cinema with regrets over 
the loss of a common multicultural state and its socialist ideals, as well as with forebo-
dings concerning Slovenia’s transition into market capitalism and its accession to the 
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European Union. The Yugonostalgia diagnosed in these publications can thus be easily 
interpreted as a symptom of societal malaise about its present and future. Interestingly, 
the diagnosis is very time-specific: all the cited publications refer to pre-2010 films, 
and no serious research about Yugonostalgia – or memories of Yugoslavia – in later 
Slovenian productions exists. It is therefore plausible to relate the heightened scholarly 
interest for the topic to concerns related to the aftermath of Slovenia’s accession to the 
EU, characteristic of the 2000s, when the abovementioned studies were published.
While Yugonostalgia may not appear to be at the forefront of Slovenian film pro-
duction today, the fact that it characterizes some of the most important national produc-
tions over the past three decades accounts for our interest in the phenomenon. Nevena 
Daković (2008) argues that “problematizing the official version of the socialist past 
taught in schools and the popular versions advanced by the “national cinema classics,” 
these [post-1992 Yugonostalgic] films invest in new truths. Investment in new truths 
means at the same time investment in new genres of “historiographic metafiction.”” 
Indeed, films about the past may contend established historical narratives and dominant 
national memory politics; at the same time, they project a lot of their own time back 
into the past that they portray. Therefore, the claim of this article is that Yugonostalgia 
in contemporary Slovenian cinema has as much to say about reflections on the Yugoslav 
past as about the symbolic imaginary of Slovenian culture. Slovenian film productions 
set in or preoccupied with the Yugoslav past articulate a broad palette of identities, in-
cluding nation-based collective identities. The aim of this article is thus to explore what 
kind of Slovenian identity is constructed and re-constructed in post-1991 Yugonostalgic 
Slovenian films. In other words, we will use close readings of the identified selection 
of films to unpack the broad contours of Slovenian Yugonostalgia. Our analyses will 
be especially focused on the place of Slovenia, Slovenian culture, and the articulation 
of “Slovenian” values and value hierarchies in these films. These analyses will be 
contrasted with the critical responses to the three films, to account for the place of these 
productions in Slovenian cultural memory.
ANALYSIS
Outsider
Andrej Košak’s 1997 feature Outsider is the first post-Yugoslav Slovenian cine-
matic articulation of a nostalgia for the Yugoslav past and its promise of a utopian 
future. From the perspective of memory studies, this film can easily be considered 
as a paradigmatic site of memory, offering a reflection on the causes of the Yugoslav 
disintegration. 
Outsider, made by a director with ties to the Slovenian punk scene, is set in 1979 and 
1980. We follow a story of Sead (Davor Janjić), a son of a Bosnian father, a strict army 
officer (Zijah Sokolović), and a Slovenian stay-at-home mom (Miranda Caharija). This 
military family is constantly on the move, in fact, it has just moved to Ljubljana. Even 
though Outsider portrays the time of proverbial Yugoslav brotherhood and unity, a 1997 
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reflection of the past times is not a naïve one. The young high-schooler Sead is seen by 
his peers as the Other, a “Bosniak”, with a funny name and a thick accent that can never 
fully belong. He eventually finds his place in the punk subculture, which is itself the 
Other or the abject of the late socialist Yugoslav society. To further complicate his 
position, he falls in love with a Slovenian schoolmate Metka (Nina Ivanič), coded as 
his complete opposite, an almost stereotypical embodiment of Slovenian femininity. 
She is firmly embedded in the national collective and reflects its values of diligence 
and kindness. Outsider is part comedy, part drama and a multicultural love story, 
and made at the time of the Yugoslav wars, cannot have a happy ending: neither for 
the star-crossed lovers, nor for Yugoslavia. On the day of Tito’s death in Ljubljana, 
Metka and her family decide she should have an abortion and forget about Sead. 
Faced with loss and a prospect of another move, Sead kills himself. The last image of 
the movie shows Metka in a white hospital gown running through Ljubljana’s empty 
streets decorated with Yugoslav flags. Vrdlovec interpreted this as a symbol of a 
lonely Slovenia running towards independence. And Sead as the first victim of future 
violent events in the Balkans. 
 Following Dijana Jelača’s (2016, 19) question how collective identity and belon-
ging is constituted through a [cinematized] “trauma as central to identification, but at 
Fig. 1: Outsider. Photo: Stane Sršen (Source: the Slovenian Cinematheque archive).
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the same time, a site of identity’s frequent undoing”, it is important to ask, what was 
there about Outsider that the audiences responded to en masse? And did this film hit 
succeed to subvert or disrupt cultural memories and identities anchored in the rise of 
Slovenian nationalism post-independence?
At the time of the film’s release film critic Bojan Kavčič (1997, 8) remarked that 
Outsider succeeded in invoking an old Balkan cinematic atmosphere of epic proporti-
ons. It did so by placing the story at the time of Tito’s death in Ljubljana, broadening 
the borders of a small country like Slovenia. At the same time, Outsider revealed 
Slovenian identity constructions; because it had a Bosnian lead, “an archetype of the 
‘hated other’” it played with the intricacies of Slovenian mentality and attitudes towards 
former “Southern brothers and sisters”. 
Similarly, Stanković (2020, 209–210) points out that Outsider is part of a body 
of films critically dealing with Slovenian attitudes towards migrants from the 
Balkans.3 However, Outsider was different from its cinematic predecessors in two 
ways. Firstly, it looked back to the past to comment not only on Yugoslav history, 
but also, on the consequences of the post-Yugoslav transition in Slovenia. Secondly, 
the film was overwhelmingly positively received among the audiences. Stanković 
hypothesizes the latter was due to an extensive popularization of the “Balkan sce-
ne”, which included a cultural nostalgia and appropriation of the past (music, films, 
activities, language, references and images) that became popular (again) after the 
disintegration of Yugoslavia. Outsider played into this nostalgic remembering, 
using not only a specific collective trauma – the death of Tito in Ljubljana, and the 
subsequent violent disintegration of Yugoslavia – to anchor the film in a specific 
temporal and regional frame, but also constructing (an often inaccurate) memory 
and atmosphere of Ljubljana’s Punk subculture, which offered an alternative way 
of being and identifying. In this sense, the film acted as a mediator of trauma and 
fantasy, collective and individual memory, the past and the present. Outsider, being 
a serious reflection of the past, a comedy and a teen film at the same time, managed 
to capture the (post-)Yugoslav collective imagination; both as a form of nostalgic 
remembering for generations that lived through the 1980s, as well as a form of 
post-memory, which Marianne Hirsch (2012) has described as a relationship to 
past collective traumas that new generations, lacking direct experience, construct 
indirectly – through stories, images etc.
However, when evaluating the film’s potential to subvert Slovenian nationalism, 
which was on the rise at the time of its release, Outsider yields somewhat ambivalent 
results. On the one hand, Outsider can be read as a form of reflective nostalgia (Boym, 
2001), as it explores marginal histories and different ways of being, as well as confronts 
Slovenian and Balkan audiences with the violent historical trajectory of the region and 
forms of nationalist hatred. On the other hand, Outsider itself did not always manage 
3 Other films with a similar theme of discrimination are: Don’t Come Back by the Same Way (Po isti poti 
se ne vračaj, 1965, Jože Babič); Rams and Mammoths (Ovni in Mamuti, 1985, Filip Robar-Dorin); 
Cheese and Jam (Kajmak in marmelada, 2002, Branko Đurić). 
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to avoid repeating the same stereotypes it wanted to deconstruct: namely, making its 
main characters cliché embodiments of imagined national traits – a somewhat not very 
intelligent Bosnian; a diligent Slovenian; a bunch of provincial high-schoolers living in 
Ljubljana; a group of sexist punkers etc. The film is more successful in connecting the 
trauma of 1980 with the resignation of 1997 through a symbolism of the social and per-
sonal decay (Stanković, 2020, 218), which is not so much a comment on Yugoslavia as 
it is on the post-transitional Slovenia. Metka and Sead’s last scenes indicate, according 
to Stanković, that Outsider is not only nostalgically looking back, but hinting that the 
fall of Yugoslavia and the cut-throat individualism and capitalism that followed were 
as destructive as the strict Yugoslavia of the older: generations that the movie’s “punk 
politics” criticizes. In this regard Outsider is one of the more polemical Slovenian films. 
Since its release, Outsider has become hailed as the movie marking Slovenian ci-
nematic rebirth, attracting a record 91000 cinema visitors across the country and being 
the first Slovenian movie post-independence with a successful distribution in all parts 
of former Yugoslavia. Its international popularity has remained strong throughout the 
years, consistently generating new comments on various online platforms, for example 
this YT comment from 2017, invoking a sense of the post-Yugoslav brotherhood: “What 
a great movie! Greetings to Slovenian brothers from Beograd.”4 
The Parade
A similar nostalgia for (post-)Yugoslav brotherhood can be found in The Parade, 
which is a part of Slovenia’s growing co-production archive. This 2011 feature was 
directed by Srđan Dragojević (also famous for his war film Pretty Villages, Pretty Fla-
me – Lepa sela lepo gore (1996)). After the release of the film, this is how he described 
it, with a clear reference to regional connection:
The Parade is a film about tolerance, understanding, and the fact that people can 
become friends despite their differences and regardless of their sexual orientation, 
ethnicity or religion. This is why The Parade is much more than a film about a 
gay parade. Already the fact that it is a Serbian-Croatian-Macedonian-Slovenian 
co-production speaks for itself. (Slovenian Film Centre, 2012, 13)
The Parade highlights the mechanisms of regional post-Yugoslav identity for-
mations, connections, and exclusions through the story of Lemun (Nikola Kojo), a 
Serbian war veteran, now a resourceful gangster, who ends up protecting the LGBT 
Pride Parade in Belgrade from groups of neo-Nazis. At the beginning of the film, 
Lemun is deeply homophobic, but when he gets an ultimatum from his future wife 
Biserka (Hristina Popović), who doesn’t approve of his homophobia, he is forced 
to get to know and protect the LGBT community. Because his gangster colleagues 
don’t want anything to do with the matter, he and Radmilo (Miloš Samolov), a kind 
4 Kakav sjajan film. Pozdrav braći Slovencima iz Beograda. 
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gay veterinarian, are forced to take a road trip across the former Yugoslavia, asking 
Lemun’s old war enemies/buddies for help. These characters include Roko (Goran 
Navojec), a Croatian war veteran; Halil (Dejan Aćimović), a Bosnian Muslim; and 
Azem (Toni Mihajlovski), an Albanian from Kosovo. Edo the Slovenian is briefly 
mentioned; regrettably, he was supposedly killed by the Montenegrin mafia in 
Stockholm. The absence of Slovenians is understandable, given the protagonists 
are Yugoslav war veterans, but also speaks about the structural position of Slovenia 
in post-Yugoslav collective memory of brotherhood nations – a position of margi-
nality and mostly unimportance. 
Similarly to Outsider, The Parade dissects nationalism through the genre of 
comedy, which catches its audiences off-guard and can therefore highlight societal 
traumas in a non-threatening way. There are many constitutive Others in the Bal-
kans, as joked about in the film’s intro: 
“Chetnik—derogatory for Serbs, used by Croats, Bosniaks, Albanians”; “Ustasha—
derogatory for Croats, used by Serbs, Bosniaks and Albanians”, the same for “Balija—
derogatory for Bosniaks […]”; and “Shiptar—derogatory for Albanians […]”. What all 
post-Yugoslav languages have in common, though, is the term “Peder—derogatory for 
a homosexual person, used by everyone”. [emphasis – authors.]
The Parade demonstrates how post-Yugoslav national identities and collective 
values are constructed as heteronormative – not just in the “violent” Balkans but 
also in the self-proclaimed “liberal” Slovenia. In this post-Yugoslav heterosexual 
matrix (Butler, 2001) specific notions of femininities, masculinities and hetero-
sexuality are integrated into the national collectives; and others – gender and sexual 
minorities – violently excluded (cf. e. g., Nagel, 1998). In this regard, The Parade 
resembles the Slovenian film The Guardian of the Frontier by Maja Weiss (Varuh 
meje, 2002), which highlights the interconnectedness of nationalism and protection 
of the state and symbolic borders through gender violence. In contrast to the nostal-
gic comedy of The Parade, Weiss, however, opted for contemporary horror.
Due to The Parade’s focus on regional homophobic and militarized masculinity 
that is, as the story suggests, capable of transformation from toxic violence to post-
-Yugoslav kinship that would also include the gay community, the film received 
mixed reviews at the time of its release. 
In the West it was praised as “Serbia’s Brokeback Mountain” by Boston Revi-
ew (Hockenos, 2012) and “The Pride of Serbia” by The Guardian (Hoad, 2012), 
and the reviews sometimes even bore a mark of Balkanism, reminiscent of the 
constructions of the region described by Todorova (2009). In these constructi-
ons, the Balkan itself is seen as a homogenic place and the Other of the West. 
For example, in his review, Paul Hockenos (2012) evoked a memory of the first 
Serbian Pride Parade: 
The legacies of socialist hostility and religious conservatism have bred a culture 
of homophobia that continues to set the region apart from Western Europe, where 
there is broad-based respect for gay rights. 
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For many critics, The Parade was thus an indicator of a turning point for the region, 
a symbol of a more open Balkan. This interpretation of the film presupposes a rather 
naïve notion of a progressivist politics – from socialist homophobia to nationalist 
violence and lastly, democratic tolerance and LGBT visibility –; in reality the region’s 
history and attitudes towards minorities are far more complex (e. g. Kuhar & Takács, 
2007; Jovanović, 2016). Regional critics, vividly remembering the wars in which the 
likes of Lemun and his buddies took part in, were less welcoming. Slovenian Pogledi 
(Barlič, 2012) claimed the film is less about the LGBT community than it is a Parade 
of machismo, and Balkanist (2013) wrote that The Parade “also has a darker agenda: 
It quietly celebrates 1990s-style nationalism under the guise of promoting ‘tolerance’”. 
Some of the regional criticism holds true, however, so does the view that The 
Parade can be seen as a turning point in regional mainstream cinema, as it subverts 
national constructions of toxic masculinities, showing their cracks and a great deal of 
homoerotic undercurrents among former “no-homo” war buddies. The Parade evokes 
the notion of queer trauma, violent and forgotten histories and pain of those who are 
usually invisible and marginalized in post-Yugoslav national collective memory but 
are nevertheless a constitutive element of national identities – as the internal Other. 
Still, the film offered a form of visibility, a queering of the Balkans through cinema, 
and managed to reach the mainstream public. It took the lead at the 2011 Serbian box 
office, overcoming The Smurfs (2011, dir. Raja Gosnell), and achieving almost 600,000 
admissions in the former Yugoslav countries. 
Houston, We Have a Problem!
Our first two analyses have allowed to highlight two loci of Yugonostalgia (and 
their limitations): dissatisfaction with Yugoslavia’s disintegration, and a longing for 
the lost Yugoslav ideals of multicultural brotherhood and unity. The third selected case 
study, Žiga Virc’s 2016 mockumentary Houston, We Have a Problem! approaches the 
Yugoslav past in a very different way, exploring the limits of documentation on the one 
hand and narrativization on the other. 
Houston, We Have a Problem! is a humorous and rather sophisticated commentary 
on the relationship between truth, history, and media. Like Alexei Fedorchenko’s 
mockumentary First On the Moon (Pervye na lune, 2004), which suggested that the 
Soviets might have launched a manned rocket to the moon in 1937, Houston, we have 
a problem! adopts a serious tone, including archival footage and statements by “profes-
sionals”, to explore the myth of Yugoslavia’s apparently prematurely interrupted space 
program. The film premiered at the Tribeca film festival and resonated in international 
media, yielding mostly positive critiques in journals such as The Hollywood Reporter, 
The Wrap, Montage Magazine, and New York Observer. In the latter, Noah Charney 
(2016) has remarked that the film “mocks Yugonostalgia”, alluding to the film’s start-
ing point: a myth that historians would not find difficult to debunk. But what happens 
if this myth is explored through documentary footage; does acknowledgement of the 
fictionality of a narrative reduce its affective charge?
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In Houston, We Have a Problem!, the omnipresent gaze of the camera transcends 
time and space, switching between various places in the United States of America 
and in the former Yugoslavia, and connecting archival footage to fictional episodes, 
and images from the past to the contemporary reality of the locations explored. 
In doing so, it gives us a glimpse into the glory and demise of the Yugoslav state, 
foregrounding mythical objects, such as Josip Broz – Tito’s ship Galeb, used for 
luxurious long voyages in the mid-20th century, and deteriorating, anchored in the 
Croatian port city of Rijeka. Possibly inspired by Marta Popivoda’s 2013 documen-
tary essay debut Yugoslavia: How Ideology Moved Our Collective Body, Houston, 
We Have a Problem! explores the prevalence of ideas and political statements over 
individual lives in the social fabric of Tito’s Yugoslavia. It even takes a step further, 
showcasing this dominance of the political and collective over the individual and 
interpersonal as myth. The fictional character of Ivan Pavić (Božidar Smiljanić) is 
used as a comical mediator between the past and the present. According to the film, 
he was involved in the development of the Yugoslav space program, which Tito sold 
to the US for 2.5 billion US dollars. Upon arrival in the US, the entire project was 
revealed to be underdeveloped and beyond salvation, sparking a rift between the 
USA and Yugoslavia, which would only grow deeper over time. 
While this overarching narrative premise of the film is grim, the characters, featured 
archival footage, and the commentary on the relationship between myth and reality, 
provided by the popstar of Slovenian philosophy Slavoj Žižek, tells a different story, 
exhibiting enthusiasm for the Yugoslav project, and a sense of pride related to Tito’s 
way of handling the situation and negotiating with the USA. “Even if it didn’t happen, 
it’s true, and that’s the crucial message,” Žižek explains to the audience. On the level 
of the film’s narrative, the explanation relates to the mechanisms of mythology. At the 
same time, it is repeated so frequently that is seems to encapsulate the film’s message 
about the Yugoslav past, as picked up on by Iva Kosmos and Tanja Petrović who have 
noted that “Virc’s film ... reveals a [post-Yugoslav] desire, a longing for the possibility 
to tell, listen to, enjoy and engage with diverse, real and unreal, possible and impossible 
histories from the second part of the twentieth century .... which still represents a part 
of experienced memory for millions of citizens, but is usually subject to normative 
interpretations that view socialism as a totalitarian system ....” (Petrović, 2016, 506).
On a related note, Sunčana Laketa (2019) has remarked that Houston, We Have a 
Problem! is a commentary on “modern liberal democracies”, inviting the spectator 
to reconsider how and whom she is encouraged to believe, and what kinds of limita-
tions are imposed on the conditions of possibility of her imagination. While this is 
certainly a factor that has contributed to the international resonance of the film, we 
argue that it is dangerous to claim that, as an “open call for thought”, Houston, We 
Have a Problem! is not really related to contemporary Slovenian directors’ strategies 
of investigating the Yugoslav past.
Amusingly Yugonostalgic and ironic toward its own post-memory position, the film 
manages to create a perspective that aligns it with both Outsider and The Parade. The 
Slovenian enunciation in Houston, We Have a Problem! is aligned with that of the 
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Fig. 2: Houston, We Have a Problem! poster. Studio Virc (Wikimedia Commons).
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producer and director, and the philosopher, here embodied by Slavoj Žižek himself, 
reinforcing the impression that the film is a documentary-like attempt to critically 
reflect on the subject matter. This mechanism resonates with the strategy at work in 
Outsider and The Parade. 
CONCLUSION
From the perspective of memory studies, fiction films “not only represent but con-
vey reality” (Ernst, 1983, 402) and they do this by offering an unintentional truth. In 
other words, controlled or not, films act as witnesses, and “as a kind of commentary on, 
and challenge to, traditional historical discourse” and in that way add to our historical 
understanding (Rosenstone, 2006, 9).
Outsider, The Parade, and Houston, We Have a Problem! all point to an insistent 
ambivalence that characterizes the reception of locally, Slovenian-produced or co-
produced films that attempt to interpret the Yugoslav past in an affective and affection-
ate way. Our analysis shows that this affection is conditioned by subtle estrangement 
techniques that hint that what is screened is not entirely objective or even not true at all. 
At the same time, the status of the images and narratives conveyed via the cinematic 
medium is different in these cases: in 1997, Outsider addressed generations that could 
relate this story to memories: their parents’ or their own. The Parade and Houston, We 
Have a Problem! make no such claims; they simply design an alternative reality, weav-
ing certain stereotypes and myths about the Yugoslav past into a slightly alternative, 
although highly allegorical present. Slovenian critical reception of Outsider and The 
Parade is indicative: they were appreciated due to their humour and “artistic merits”, as 
the Slovenian film fund might have put it, but distanced from on accounts of nostalgia: 
for Yugoslavia, youth, and rebellion in the first case, and for – in a sense – cutified 
1990s-nationalisms in the second case. Houston, We Have a Problem! is different in 
this respect: taking pop philosophy and a myth as its starting point, it appears – on 
the surface –to long for the past. However, it celebrates this past through images and 
editing, delivering a subtle message, echoed in Žižek’s statements about myths: they 
function regardless of our “knowledge” that they are not true.
Žižek’s point can be extended beyond Houston, We Have a Problem! In fact, 
Outsider and The Parade also engage in exploring narratives about the Yugoslav past 
that greatly rely on stereotypes and postmemories, and reflect today’s (rather than 
yesterday’s) problems. Moreover, our analyses reveal that all three films elaborate a 
“Slovenian” position toward the Yugoslav past: through the characters in Outsider, the 
dialogues in The Parade, and the philosophical commentary and documentary footage 
in Houston, We Have a Problem!, it emerges as sympathetic, but somehow detached 
from the subject matter. This kind of engagement with the recent past is not entirely 
innocent: it ignores, to a great degree, one’s own involvement in this past. 
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GRADNJE POJUGOSLOVANSKIH IDENTITET V SODOBNEM 
SLOVENSKEM FILMU
Natalija MAJSOVA
Univerza v Ljubljani, Fakulteta za družbene vede, Oddelek za kulturologijo, Kardeljeva ploščad 5, 1000 
Ljubljana, Slovenija
e-mail: natalija.majsova@fdv.uni-lj.si
Jasmina ŠEPETAVC
Univerza v Ljubljani, Fakulteta za družbene vede, Oddelek za kulturologijo, Kardeljeva ploščad 5, 1000 
Ljubljana, Slovenija
e-mail: jasmina.sepetavc@fdv.uni-lj.si
POVZETEK
Članek naslavlja vprašanje konstrukcije slovenske nacionalne identitete v 
razmerju do spominjanja na obdobje socialistične Jugoslavije in njenega razpada 
v kontekstu sodobne slovenske kinematografije (1991–2021). Naslanjajoč se na 
pregled slovenskih kulturnih politik, vezanih na filmsko produkcijo v izbranem 
obdobju, preizprašava simbolno mesto zgodovine in posebej zgodovine, vezane 
na obdobje socializma, v sodobnem slovenskem filmu. Dinamiko pozabljanja in 
spominjanja na socializem in na jugoslovansko identiteto nadalje predstaviva 
prek poglobljene analize izbranih reprezentativnih primerov – v devetdesetih letih 
najbolj gledanega slovenskega celovečerca Outsider (1997), mockumentarca Ho-
uston, imamo problem! (2016) in koprodukcijskega filma Parada (2011). Analizo 
reprezentacij poveževa z analizo kritiške in popularne nacionalne in mednarodne 
odmevnosti izbranih del, pri tem pa filme obravnavava kot odlagališča in preiz-
praševalce nacionalnih in regionalnih politik, travm, reinterpretacij zgodovine in 
emocij, ki niso zakodirane samo v samih tekstih, temveč tudi v kontekstu praks, ki 
obkrožajo njihovo produkcijo in recepcijo (cf. Erll 2009). Vsi trije izbrani primeri 
pokažejo, da je film pomembno mesto refleksije in konstrukcije nedavne Slovenske 
preteklosti. Vendar pa opažena filmska jugonostalgija še zdaleč ni enoznačna, 
temveč skozi tri desetletja neodvisnosti Slovenije prevzema raznolike pomene – od 
hrepenenja po nekdanjem “bratstvu”, do travme transformacije in nenazadnje 
parodične distance do jugoslovanske preteklosti.
 
Ključne besede: Slovenski film, oblikovanje identitet, kulturni spomin, nostalgija, 
travma
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