It was the 25^th of June in sunny Cologne, a day marked as a “Slovenian day” in this old German city. The sound of the Slovenian rock band Siddharta was igniting the city centre, football fans were rushing towards the city stadium to watch Slovenia play England, and then there was a lecture on queer images in old Slovenian films held by our colleague Jasmina Šepetavc at the University of Cologne (the Slavic Institute at the University of Cologne). The lecture titled More than Comrades: Queering Slovenia and Yugoslavia, focused on excavating old films from the region that contained more subtle or campy and explicit queerness (turns out there were a lot of them).

Next day the Institute and Filmhaus Köln organized a screening of the 1979 film Kill Me Gently (dir. Boštjan Hladnik). After the screening, students David and Mai who were part of this year’s seminar focusing on (Post-)Yugoslav film and literature (mentor Dr. Dragana Grbić) talked to Jasmina about the film’s themes, politics, and history.

Special thank you to Jana Šter, the lecturer of Slovenian language at the Institute, Dragana Grbić, Mirjam Baumert (Filmhaus Köln), the students and all others for being wonderful hosts.