Award for lifetime achievement in film goes to Milena Zupančič

Ljubljana – Actress Milena Zupančič, one of the biggest stars of Slovenian and before that Yugoslav cinema and theatre, is the recipient of this year’s Badjura Award for lifetime achievements in film.

The jury pointed out that “in more than five decades of appearances on cinema screens and television, she has created more than 80 characters and worked with the biggest names in the former Yugoslavia”.

“Her acting has transcended the boundaries of established film acting,” the statement adds about the 75-year-old, who has left a mark in the collective consciousness of Slovenians in particular with her appearances in Blossoms in Autumn (1973) and The Widowhood of Karolina Žašler (1976).

It was the Slovenian Screen Actors Guild that proposed Zupančič for the award, given out since 1995 and to be conferred to this year’s winner at the opening of the Festival of Slovenian Film Festival in Portorož on 25 October.

Zupančič’s multitude of characters has included “the ‘ideal of the pure girl burnt in the awakening of love’, the socially rejected rebellious woman…the experimental New Wave heroine, the convincing historic heroine…ranged from satire to romantic comedy – again through tragic women with a full sense of destiny – as well as sensual and fatal women”, the guild’s head Brane Završan wrote.

Zupančič was a member of all the biggest theatre houses in Ljubljana, while also making guest appearances in almost all professional Slovenian theatres, numerous theatres in the territory of the former Yugoslavia, as well as in independent productions.

She is the recipient of a number of awards, including of the Borštnik Ring, the highest honour for theatre actors conferred in Slovenia, and the Prešeren Prize, the country’s top accolade for artistic achievement.

The Badjura Award was introduced in 1973 by the Slovenian Film Artists Association to honour various professions in the film industry.

In 1995, it started being conferred exclusively as a lifetime achievement award. Last year, it went to innovator and film sound engineer Emilija Soklič.

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