The Nearest Elsewhere: A Slovenian Journey

A journey to the borders of our nearest elsewhere, a land, a country, a culture that is just beyond a mobile threshold, made to be crossed and erased a million times by transmigrations of people, languages, habits. The Slovenia in the words and in the eyes of the journalist Paolo Rumiz, in the interview to the great poet Alojz Rebula, in Claudio Magris’s memories, the verses of the writer Marisa Madieri – his wife, in the sounds of the orchestra conducted by Maestro Igor Coretti-Kuret, in Boris Pahor writings, interpreted by Toni Servillo.

The documentary takes its cue from my previous film, Il viaggio della signorina Vila (2012), in which I told the story of the city of Trieste (...) Even then, I showed my desire to cross the nearby border, which once was a true physical wall, but today is a more abstract division line, yet also more paradoxical, because, depending on who crosses it, it highlights similarities or distances between the nations it divides, Italy and Slovenia. (Elisabetta Sgarbi)