Pero

Peter Musevski was something of Damjan Kozole's acteur fétiche, appearing in almost all of his films since Rezervni deli (2003), which, again, marked a breakthrough for both of them. Kozole began work on Pero in 2019, when it should have been something like a therapeutic journey through Musevski's fears and sorrows – a film of various registers and aesthetics whose diversity of approaches would mirror the many sides of its subject. But then, on March 18th 2020, right at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Musevski died by suicide. Pero now commences with a sequence that the film was originally supposed to end with: an acting workshop, which is now about the absence of Musevski, and what this means for the assembled group of colleagues and friends. With the next sequence, Pero changes directorial tags completely, and again with the next sequence, and again with the sequence that follows... Because Musevski is as much a memory, someone to imagine, re-enact or act, as he's a trace through Slovenian cinema, a presence, body and voice in some fifty films, which remain, and with them: something of the man called Pero. (International Film Festival Rotterdam)