Monsters, Victims and Rebels: Transitions of Post-Yugoslav Slovenian Queerness on Film

Abstract The article looks at Slovenian queer images in the country’s post-independence feature cinema. While during Yugoslavian times Slovenian cinema contained complex, at times even radical queer imagery, the 1990s’ re-traditionalization of society was also reflected on film in the erasure of queerness. However, when queerness again became part of national cinematic images, it reflected the country’s complex transition and in-betweenness – between the legacy of Yugoslavia, the traditional values of the new state, and an ambition to quickly become part of the EU. This trajectory was neither linear nor one-directional (from Yugoslavia to the EU with its supposedly more liberal attitudes), but multilayered and messy. While queerness was at times portrayed in problematic ways or as something that cannot freely exist in the new national framework, it was nevertheless also a point of subversion, transgression, and recently alternative communal solidarity.