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Miha Mazzini | |
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.jpg) Miha Mazzini | |
| Born | (1961-06-03)3 June 1961 (age 63) Jesenice,PR Slovenia,Yugoslavia |
| Occupation | Novelist, screenwriter, film director, columnist |
| Nationality | Slovenian |
| Alma mater | University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana |
| Period | 1981 to present |
| Genre | Novel, Short story, Film |
| Notable works | Guarding Hanna,The Cartier Project,King of the Rattling Spirits |
| Website | |
| www | |
Miha Mazzini (born 3 June 1961 inJesenice,Yugoslavia) is a Slovenian writer, screenwriter and film director with thirty published books, translated in ten languages. He has a PhD in anthropology from theInstitutum Studiorum Humanitatis and has MA in Creative Writing for Film and Television at theUniversity of Sheffield. He is a voting member of theEuropean Film Academy.
Mazzini described his childhood inTitoistYugoslavia, in three novels. The protagonist of the 2002 novel,King of the Rattling Spirits, (based on his 2001Sweet Dreams film script) is 12 years old. In the 2015 novel,Childhood, the protagonist is five. In the third novelIt's Personal, (2022) the protagonist sums up his childhood and its consequences.
His first novelCrumbs (American titleThe Cartier Project) was set in his hometown ofJesenice and published in 1989 and sold 54,000 copies.
He was the first Slovenian writer to write a novel aboutthe erased, people who lost all of their rights and legal status after the declaration of the country's independence in 1991. Later he adapted the novel for the feature filmErased.
His historical novelPaloma Negra deals withYu-Mex music in the 1950s, when Yugoslav singers started mimicking the songs and music they saw in Mexican films. During the research for the novel, Mazzini recorded the stories told by protagonists and made a documentary calledYugoslav Mexico (YuMex).[1] The novelGerman Lottery is set in the same era but deals with swindlers, illusions and unreliable protagonists.
Mazzini introduced in the post-1990Slovene literature atough protagonist, characteristic ofNoir fiction, in his novelGuarding Hanna.
His work was selected for international anthologies; including his short story "Mother" included inContemporary European Fiction, and "Avro Lancaster" inBest European Fiction 2018.
TheCartier Project won the 1987Best Novel of the Year award from both pro-government and opposition newspapers.[2]
In 2012, one of his stories ("That Winter") received thePushcart Prize.
Mazzini won the 2016Kresnik Award for his novelOtroštvo (Childhood).
in 2019 he won best screenplay for the filmErased at FEST festival, Belgrade, Serbia,[3] and at the Raindance festival, London, UK.[4]
In October 2019, Mazzini commented on the decision of theSwedish Academy to give the Nobel Prize for literature toPeter Handke by saying, "some artists sold their human souls for ideologies (Hamsun and Nazism), some for hate (Celine and his rabid antisemitism), some for money and power (Kusturica) but the one that offended me the most was Handke with his naivety for the Milošević regime (...) I found him cruel and totally self-absorbed in his naivety."[5]
A Very Simple Story is a script in multiple languages, read by actresses from different countries. Mazzini was the screenwriter and director of both the Slovenian (8:28) and Italian (9:57) films. The project was nominated for thePrix Europe award.
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