The Slovenian film IZLET (A TRIP, 2011) by writer/director Nejc Gazvoda held its world premier in Sarajevo last year at the 17th Sarajevo Film Festival (SFF). The film screened in competition and was nominated for Best Film. The film has been nominated for Best Film in several festivals around the world and won the award for Best Feature Film at its national Slovene Film Festival by the Slovene Film Critics Association.

It most recently traveled to the 24th Palm Springs International Film Festival, 2013, and became Slovenia's Oscar submission for 2012. It is the first feature film for writer/director Nejc Gazvoda and likewise for producer Ales Pavlin of Perfo Productions.

The film is an experimental road movie about three best friends (Andrej, Gregor and Ziva) who reunite after a long time apart to take a road trip together through their native Slovenia. They have known each other for years and yet, during their trip, find out that none of them really knows each other. Since leaving school, each of them has gone their separate ways, far away from the idealism of youth to experience life’s difficult and often iniquitous blows. While Andrej has had to live in old world Solvenia as a homosexual, oftentimes discriminated against even to the point of abuse, Gregor has lived through war as a soldier and has partaken in the death of war’s innocent collateral damage. Their beautiful female friend, Ziva, seems to have it all going for her on the outside- she’s attractive, smart, loveable and Gregor clearly has a repressed passion for her- but there is something beneath the surface that she has never revealed to either of them, a dark secret that begins boiling to the surface the longer she suppresses it.

In the beginning of the trip, it is all laughs and excitement, but the further they go out on the road, the further they go into themselves and reveal the darker, more interior trip within. A TRIP is a tender, yet agonizing coming-of-age drama about friendship, love and finding oneself; the trying and heartbreaking journey we must all take to merit all three.

Review written by Vanessa McMahon