On Our Own Land
Na svoji zemlji, 1948, fiction, Digital DCP (2017), 110 min
YU (SI)
Finished
The story is set in the western (Littoral) district of Slovenia, during the last two years of the liberation struggle. A typical Slovenian village survived first the Italian Occupation (since the Treaty of Rapallo after the First World War) and then the German one. To its inhabitants, all of them Slovenes, the struggle means a chance to liberate themselves from underneath the foreign rule. The film is on the one hand a war film about the partisan struggle, and on the other the villagers who were practically all supporters of the liberation struggle.
In 1948 the director France Štiglic (1919–93) shot On Our Own Land, the first Slovenian live-action feature after World War II. With this full-length debut he qualified among the candidates for the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1949. He then returned to Cannes twice more: in 1957 with The Valley of Peace and in 1960 with his film The Ninth Circle. Both times he was nominated for the Golden Palm. In 1961 The Ninth Circle also qualified, as the Yugoslav candidate, among the finalists …