Fatamorgana
History
After completing the secondary marine school in Piran and after two years of sailing around the world, Matjaž Žbontar, born in 1950, studied architecture and film in Ljubljana. The double winner of the Mala Pula Award – the award of MAFAF festival, the festival of amateur film in ex-Yugoslavia, in the early 1970s, he continued his studies at the Film Academy in Zagreb, Croatia. During his 40 years of work, he shot many documentaries at home and abroad. In 1995, he founded the production company Fatamorgana.
Documentaries
Mostly in co-production with RTV Slovenia, Fatamorgana has produced many documentary films related to the field of culture and art, with an emphasis on important Slovene artists and their works, for example, the painter Lojze Spacal (1907–2000), art historian Zoran Kržišnik (1920–2008), sculptor Negovan Nemec (1947–1987), architect Viktor Sulčič (1895–1973), film director and producer Ivan Bolle, etc.
Other projects
Fatamorgana also makes promotional films about Slovenia and its capital Ljubljana, and short experimental documentaries, for example, Whence Thy Beauty, Slovenia? (1999) by director Dušan Povh and Born to Die (2018) by director Matjaž Žbontar, screened also at the Festival of Slovenian Film in 2018.