Director

Sonja Prosenc

Slovenia, Italy, Norway | 2018 | 105 min | English

• Producer Rok Sečen, Sonja Prosnec
• Production Company Monoo, Nefertiti Film, Incitus Films
• Screenplay Sonja Prosenc
• Cinematography Mitja Ličen
• Editing Frida Eggum Michaelsen
• Sound Gisle Tveito
• Cast Doroteja Nadrah , Kristoffer Joner, Zita Fusco, Gregor Zemljič, Matija Vastl.
• Contacts

  Monoo

  rok@monoo.si

About the Film

Sonja Prosenc, Slovenian filmmaker, is back with the film History of Love. Just like her first feature The Tree, this one also experiments with intense sensory elements, especially with sound, since it has, at its center, a hearing-impaired lead character. This sensory intensity had gained the director a lot of attention also in her first film.

Her new film is about overwhelming mourning and sorrow. A seventeen-year-old loses her mother, an opera singer, in an accident. The film follows the teenage girl Eva as she discovers a hidden world of family secrets. The people involved in these unraveling secrets, and their details, creep into the disturbed girl's psyche. Eva’s encounters result in unexpected events, taking us to undiscovered places. Reality and imagination merge to create a world that is uniquely Eva's.

Prosenc's images and sounds are so intense and strong that they make dialogue unnecessary to the film. Places overlap and time stops – or passes very slowly – reflecting Eva's confused state of mind. The cinematic treatment presents different facets of that state in dark frames, and images of Eva's face drenched in sunlight. The sound of classical music, especially Bach, rise intermittently to create a tempo that is unsettling.

The Central European setting is reflected in the characters’ behavior and emotional responses. History of Love is a meditative film characterized by slow, elegant camera movement. It does not have a traditional plot, but relies on the audience's interaction with its subtle underlying meanings and messages that require keen attention. The camera does not only move above the ground; it dives under water to follow Eva's passion for diving, and immerses us in her underwater world.

Hauvick Habashian