Vinko Möderndorfer

Photo: Mare Mutić
Novelist, poet, playwright, essay writer and a director of theatre, radio, film and TV. He graduated in theatre and radio directing from the Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television at the University of Ljubljana and tackled all theatre types, styles and genres during his soul-searching as a director. In TV media he mostly directed TV plays and documentaries based on his own scripts.

More about the author

Eeny Meeny Miny Moe (2018)

“You’re most alone when you’re dead.”

Rosa Luxemburg lives in the next street (2018)

“Everything happened as it has been written. Nothing happened as it was written. Everything will happen as it has been written.”

Romeo and Juliet Were Refugees (2017)

It’s not just people who are running from war that are refugees. A refugee is anyone who lives in their own country but cannot live off their work. These people are refugees in their own nation, amongst their own people, in a system that used and discarded them, even though they played an important role in it. We live in times of global refugees. We are convinced that other people are refugees, but in fact we are, too.

Sisters (2017)

A crime drama about very intimate issues

The Dogs Bark (2015)

History play in verse and prose

Greenland (2014)

“We live in demented times. In an era where the whole of our civilisation suffers from dementia.”

Europa (2013)

Comedy about the possibilities, which the over glorified Europe offers to the young people – the Slovenian version

A Little Night Quartet (2013)

"The play takes place every night from 11.14 p.m. to 11.34 p.m. and from 3.56 a.m. to 5.04 a.m.”

Me, Batman (2012)

This is a play for the young but also for all those adults who are involved with the young. It is not far from reality, except that reality is often crueller and more merciless.

Ten (2011)

“What is worst is the falling of the angel of values. Of all values. Young people won’t know where to turn. Life will be devoid of everything. It is already happening. This is what we should fear … A world where the only value is money, is a dead world.”

Exercises in Anxiety (2010)

The play Exercises in Anxiety, subtitled »a play about today’s times«, cuts into the psychopathy of the present with an extraordinary sharpness.

The tunnel (2010)

“All this world is not for real; all this fucking sunny country … Triglav is not for real; these houses and blocks of flats; these lawns and trees; crossroads and banks; monuments and violets; jobs and factories. Even bread and milk are fake. And you, girls, you want something for real.”

Nežka Chooses a Husband (2009)

A comedy from Slavic linguistical circles with digressional monologues

A nostalgic comedy (2008)

A Nostalgic Comedy about yearning fort times past, for emotions felt for one antoher, for things gone and most of all, for the life that is running out.

A Beautiful Day to Die (2007)

“Language is character. Language is rebellion.” – A play about a generation clash.

At the Bottom (2006)

A family – father, mother, two sons, their lover and grandmother – are living in utter misery and poverty. Their home is a dark cellar, their usual meal is a soup of rotten vegetables and rat meat.

Visits (2006)

How to kill your parents?

Check Mate (2005)

"I think our new government with such an eager Minister of Work, Family and Moral Reform, will be able to get many useful things done.”

Tears and blood (2005)

A confrontation of five women (or six in the end) bound together by the same man – on the day of his funeral.

Dead Souls (2004)

A bitterly funny play aimed at Slovenia in its present time, where some continue to earn political gain with the corpses of the wretched past.

Brussels hotel (2003)

‘’Here! This is the list of all our wishes. Give and take. Countertrade. We want it all: forests, houses, buildings, schools, estates, newspapers, television, all radio frequencies, banks, enterprises, heavy industry and lake Bled …’’

Three Sisters (2002)

This comedy features a professor of Russian language, a fanatical lover of Chekhov who, for this reason, not only owns a cherry orchard, but his three daughters are named after the Three Sisters (Olga, Irina and Masha). At his golden wedding anniversary, the daughters are shocked by the parents’ decision to file for an uncontested divorce.

Mephisto's Report (2002)

"Good literature always speaks of its time without saying any particular words about it.”

In the Country (2001)

"Don’t go fooling around with Linhart now, mother! Europe awaits!"

Choir Practice (1996)

This play is both a comedy and a satire. It aims to be a comedy mostly where it speaks through comic characters and situations. It is a satire where it reminds us of scenes from our everyday life and daily politics.

Landscape No. 2 (1995)

Gaber’s are a wealthy family, living in a new house, richly furnished, located in a trendy suburban area, with a well maintained back-garden and a finely trimmed lawn at the front. But this is only a façade for a number of hidden problems.

Transvestite marriage (1992)

"Transvestism is theatre! Transvestism is life! Transvestism is also a ‘philosophy’'. But above all, it is a comedy. A situation comedy to absorb in one breath.”

Camera Obscura (1988)

“And so, on a Shrove Tuesday night, all these people meet ‘by chance’ in a half-built flat. That is the start of a story that needs to unwind before our eyes in a single theatrical stroke with all its rises and falls, as is typical of such carnivalesque, unpredictable and entirely drunken nights.”

Boy, Girl and Grey-Haired Gentleman

This is a play about the deceptive boundary between reality and illusion.

Three Women

Have shopping centres become a tool to achieve happiness? Can we really buy anything?

Bedroom or Saint George Killing the Dragon

“We have abolished old values and never invented new ones.”

Christmas tale

"The holes in the sky will not be patched by stars on their own accord!"