A Strategy for Children’s and Youth Cinema in Slovenia and the Establishment of the KEKEC Festival

The films we see as children are the ones we return to for the rest of our lives. Yet Europe treats children's cinema as an afterthought: a few dedicated festivals, no reliable data, and a market where nearly two thirds of tickets go to American films.

Klemen Dvornik, director of Block 5, professor at AGRFT Ljubljana and programming director of CIFF KEKEC, the first international children's film festival in Slovenia, presents what a complete strategy for young audiences could look like. He draws on what already works in Europe, from Denmark's 25 percent share to Croatia's dedicated development call, and on the first steps in Slovenia: the Film Centre's new strategy, Kinodvor's film education, a new audiovisual law, and the KEKEC festival.

He then proposes the 25 by 2030, a plan modelled on how European cinema reached gender equality: count, set a target, support talent, pledge, repeat.

Klemen Dvornik, following his graduation from the Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television (AGRFT) in Ljubljana, started out as a director of music videos and television programmes. In 2009, he set up the production company Filmservis to focus on directing and producing feature films and television series.

His greatest directorial success to date is the feature film Block 5, which premiered at the Locarno Film Festival and went on to win 12 domestic and international awards. Notable among his productions is Barbara Zemljič's short film How I Learned to Hang Laundry, which won an award at the Sarajevo Film Festival and was subsequently short listed for a European Film Academy (EFA) Award. His other high-profile projects include the critically acclaimed series The Lake and Lenin's Park.

Klemen is currently the Artistic Director of the newly established KEKEC International Festival for Children and Young Audiences and is also an active member of various professional associations and organisations. He has served as President of the Directors Guild of Slovenia (2012–2016), the Federation of Slovenian Filmmakers' Associations (2017–2025), and the Federation of European Film Directors (FERA) (2019–2022). Since 2017, he has also held the post of Assistant Professor of Television Directing at the University of Ljubljana's AGRFT.