THE SECOND GENERATION
DRUGA GENERACIJA
⟩⟩⟩ view the film on rtvslo.si
»I'm Slovene … yet I am not.«
They were born in Slovenia to parents that had come from the South, from »down there«. In search of work and better life, their parents or grandparents came to Slovenia, once the northernmost republic of former Yugoslavia. They came »just for a couple of months or years« - and stayed, hoping to return to their homes at least when retired.
Their hopes to return to their home villages and towns and strong tradition marked the lives of their children. Their children grew up in homes that were like small enclaves. At home, they communicated in the native language of their parents, they celebrated other religions and holidays than the majority of population – and they felt that they belonged to some other culture. Some parts of Ljubljana have become small ghettos where the Slovenian language can rarely be heard. Those ghettos are like some parallel world.
Children of the second generation of Southerners living in Slovenia are constantly torn between “here” and “there”. Between a neat but cold society that is willing to accept only those who play it by the rules, and the environment that seems much cosier and more familiar – and in which life seems to consist of drinking coffee and chatting with friends about glittery fashionable clothes, and about making fortune as easy and as fast as one can. They seek their identity in many ways and some prefer to integrate and become Slovenians, others strongly rely on their roots.