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 at the Film Academy in Ljubljana. The double winner of the Mala Pula Award – the award of MAFAF festival, the festival of the amateur film in ex-Yugoslavia, in the early seventies 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 a production company Fatamorgana.
Documentaries
Mostly in coproduction with RTV Slovenia, Fatamoragana produced many documentary films related to a field of culture and art, with the emphasis on important Slovene artists and their works, for example about 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? in 1999 by a director Dušan Povh, and Born to Die in 2018 by a director Matjaž Žbontar, screened also at the Festival of Slovenian Film in 2018.