More than Comrades: queering Slovenian cinema in Yugoslavia

Abstract

This article explores the forgotten queer pasts of Eastern European cinema under socialism and highlights the queer cinematic histories of Yugoslavia, specifically its former Republic of Slovenia. Through visual, substantive, and contextual analysis, the article focuses on the selected films with queer undertones made post WWII, arguing that the relationship between queerness and Yugoslav society and cinema was more complex than previously thought. The examples demonstrate that Yugoslav cinema reflected the country’s ambivalent attitudes towards queerness: on the one side, the analysed films featured numerous unhappy queer people and sad endings, on the other, they portrayed images of different non-normative sexualities and gender expressions rebelliously and more openly than is currently acknowledged in queer cinema scholarship.