Slovenian filmmaker Nejc Gazvoda broke out in the early 2010s as the director of two award-winning films, A Trip [+lire aussi :
critique
bande-annonce
interview : Jure Henigman
interview : Nejc Gazvoda
fiche film] and Dual [+lire aussi :
critique
bande-annonce
interview : Nejc Gazvoda
fiche film], and the co-writer of Rok Biček's Venice Critics’ Week prizewinner Class Enemy [+lire aussi :
critique
bande-annonce
interview : Rok Biček
interview : Rok Bicek
interview : Rok Bicek
fiche film]. He is now back with his third feature film, Role Model [+lire aussi :
critique
fiche film], which has just started shooting on location in Novo Mesto.

The picture, billed as “an absurdist tale about absurd times”, follows Maja (Mojca Funkl, from Sanremo [+lire aussi :
critique
bande-annonce
interview : Miroslav Mandić
fiche film]) and her son Jan (newcomer France Mandić), who, after her divorce, move from Ljubljana to a small town close to the southern border of the country. Jan is in his final year of primary school, with a few months left until his graduation, and Maja is a psychologist at the same school.

The film begins with the reopening of the schools after the end of the pandemic, but the children do not seem to have returned to the way things were before. Jan starts being bullied by his peers for no reason, and Maja makes an enemy in the form of a young woman, also a psychologist, played by Klara Kuk (Don't Forget to Breathe [+lire aussi :
critique
bande-annonce
fiche film]). Jan meets a mysterious man (Jure Henigman, from A Trip [+lire aussi :
critique
bande-annonce
interview : Jure Henigman
interview : Nejc Gazvoda
fiche film] and Dual) whose support he seeks in distress, but the price he will have to pay is high.

“Role Model is a film about a particular period, the middle of 2021, set in a primary school, and all the issues it deals with are concrete – peer violence, loneliness and dignity,” says Gazvoda. “At the same time, the feature is a trip back to my primary-school years and my youth, which seems stranger and more unnatural with each passing year, just like the times we are living in now after the pivotal, terrifying, unforgettable 2020. This is probably my most personal project, set in the most impersonal era of recent history. It is the tension between these two opposites that interests me in the film and that I hope will make it original.”

Also starring Croatia's Marina Redžepović (The Staffroom [+lire aussi :
critique
bande-annonce
interview : Sonja Tarokić
fiche film]), with Czech cinematographer Jan Šuster serving as the DoP, and Italian sound designers Valeria Cocuzza and Marco Brancati also on board, Role Model is being co-produced by Aleš Pavlin and Andrej Štritof for Slovenia's Perfo, Ondrej Zima and Silvie Michajlova for the Czech Republic's Evolution Films, and Alessandro Borrelli for Italy's La Sarraz Pictures, with participation from Ljubljana-based Viba Film. It has been supported by the Slovenian Film Centre, the Czech Film Fund and the Italian Ministry of Culture.