Ljubljana Documentary Film Festival

In 1994 a section for documentaries was introduced at the Ljubljana International Film Festival (LIFFe) and it immediately received a great response from the audience. It quickly became clear that the documentary film production has its audience, even a large one, although documentaries were rarely – if at all – screened in cinemas. It became one of the most popular sections among the audience of the Ljubljana International Film Festival (LIFFe), until it was discontinued from the official programme after 1996.

Thus, it is not surprising that in the 1998 the Documentary Film Festival was established. In the first few years it was a specialised non-competitive festival that offered a general, quite unselective overview of the contemporary documentary film production. Later it introduced a competitive section for Mountain and Adventure Films (in 2007 it became a separate festival event, named Mountain Film Festival).

From 2007 when Simon Popek became the director and the selector of the festival – it has become a specialised competitive festival focusing on contemporary documentary film production, mostly on films that deal with social issues and social phenomena.