14/12/2023 - The helmer’s sophomore fiction feature tells the story of two young women forging an online friendship that is put to the test once they meet in person

On the set of Everything That’s Wrong With You by Urša Menart (© Domen Martinčič)

On Wednesday 13 December, Slovenian filmmaker Urša Menart started shooting her sophomore fiction feature, Everything That’s Wrong With You, on location in the town of Tolmin, perched up in the mountains in the northwest of Slovenia. According to the schedule, it will last for around 30 working days that will be spent in and around Tolmin, Kranj, Nova Gorica and Ljubljana, as well as on the island of Usedom in the Baltic Sea.

After making a name for herself with documentaries like There Once Was the Land of Hard-Working People (2012) and What About Mojca? (2014), her fiction debut, My Last Year as a Loser [+see also:
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film profile] (2018), and her screenwriting and acting contributions to Damjan Kozole’s Half-Sister [+see also:
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interview: Damjan Kozole
film profile] (2019), Menart has decided to once again tell the story of the trouble that the younger generation is having  fitting into a world that was not created for it. The protagonist, Maruša, connects with Alja, a nurse who works abroad, online, and the two quickly become friends. When Alja falls ill, Maruša travels to her place only to find out that not everything is the way it seemed at the start.

“The film tells a story about searching for closeness: the generation the two leading characters belong to is lonelier than any generation before it, and meeting new friends as an adult is even more difficult than forging friendships at a young age,” Menart said. “The world is merciless to young women, especially those who don’t benefit from strong support or have a background in power structures. The film depicts the contrasts between these feelings of invisibility and not belonging, and the longing for a human connection, for deep friendships, like those we often see in the movies, and for someone to finally understand us.”

The cast is led by Anuša Kodelja (glimpsed in Tijana Zinajić’s Bitch, a Derogatory Term for a Woman [+see also:
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Everything That’s Wrong With You is a Slovenian-Serbian-German-Croatian co-production involving Vertigo (represented by producers Danijel Hočevar and Katja Lenarčič), Radio-Television Slovenia, Living Pictures (co-producers Dimče Stojanovski and Stefan Orlandić), Chromosom Film (Alexander Wadouh and Roxana Richters), Tidewater Pictures (Paula Klossner) and Eclectica (Rea Rajčić). It has received technical support from Studio Viba Film and financial backing from the Slovenian Film Centre, Film Center Serbia, Creative Europe – MEDIA and Re-Act.