T-Port Blog

Slovenian director Simon Intihar made the cut for our 2025 T-Port Lighthouse Selections with his short film CONTAINER (picked by our guest curator Jukka-Pekka Laakso) a visceral and textured portrait of three characters reclaiming their space in a community facing systemic eviction. 

We caught up with the filmmaker to ask him about the deep political roots of the project, the sound of heavy distortion, working with non-actors, and surviving crew disasters.

Hi Simon, could you introduce yourself?

I’m Simon (34) from Slovenia, I live in Ljubljana, and even though I’m (more or less) a grown up, I still enjoy doing the same things I did when I was young: playing drums in bands, going skateboarding and watching (and now even making) films.

Growing up in the small town of Postojna those three things were my only escapes, far away from the ridicule of my surroundings. At that time, Yugoslavia broke apart and all the things I was interested in were mostly influences from the western block and seen as taboo by a big portion of the general public, especially in less developed areas.

I believe that living on the fringe of society helped me develop a strong sensibility to connect with similar stories — microcosms that exist on the outskirts of what’s socially accepted, yet still resonate deeply in everyday life. Of course, my life is different now, and most of those taboos have become normalized.

How many films had you made before CONTAINER?

Before CONTAINER, I’d created two student films, a short TV drama, and a short documentary/animation. Each project taught me that directing is about bringing a singular vision to life — but the challenge is that no one else truly cares about that vision except you. Making it a reality requires constant determination and persistence.

What inspired the idea for CONTAINER?

I first got the idea back in 2016, inspired by a real-life container that was already in full motion in my hometown of Postojna. By 2018, I began developing it into a feature film but ultimately decided to start with a short.

Then, in 2020, Slovenia saw a far-right government takeover, leading to the forceful eviction of many squatted cultural spaces. In January 2021, our largest squat—the old Rog bike factory—was raided by police and elite security guards. They used brute force to expel the residents, throwing them onto the freezing streets. Some lost everything—expensive camera equipment, entire collections of artwork, even their animal companions.

To me, these people were indigenous to the spaces they had reclaimed—vast, abandoned places left to decay by society, which they inhabited and brought back to life, only to be forcibly removed from them in the end.

What was the production process like?

We wanted to create an environment that not only resembled the original container but also felt authentic in its own right. This allowed us to be flexible, enabling the camera to move freely in almost any direction with minimal setup time.

For the three main roles, we cast two non-actors, Gal Zabret and David Sotenšek, alongside actress Lana Bučevec. All of them are personally connected to these spaces and subcultures in real life. The inspector role is played by Uroš Potočnik, a renowned Slovenian actor who, in his youth, was known for portraying a rebellious punk.

All the extras were people from the scene as well. We kept the crew small and intimate. In true DIY spirit, the actors wore their own clothes, some from my own high school days. Most of the production design was made from leftover materials found on location. Making it cheaper made it feel more real.

What were the biggest challenges?

Producing this film during the COVID-19 restrictions was pure chaos. Our original shoot in 2021 had to be postponed by a year. Even then, things didn’t get any easier — we had to recast almost all the actors, one of whom had a stroke the day before the shoot. Half the crew had to be replaced. Some crew members didn’t show up, and we had to make last-minute compromises at every step.

I found myself juggling ten different tasks just to keep things moving — pushing me to the brink of a complete mental breakdown. It was a relentless, uphill battle to get the film made — but somehow, we pulled through.

Tell us about your use of sound – both the score and sound effects 

The soundscape is built primarily from diegetic sounds and music. Certain transitions are manipulated using distortion effects—like those used in heavy music genres—to create a dissonant atmosphere that enhances the film’s themes.

The ending features a minimal musical piece built using guitar feedback processed through various effects and synths. The only pre-recorded track is a song by KRIPL, a local band influential in Slovenia’s extreme music subculture.

And the visual choices?

Originally, I wanted to shoot the film on Super 16mm using both anamorphic and spherical lenses. Super 16 felt like the perfect fit for the story’s raw, punk aesthetic. My idea was to use anamorphic for horizontal perspectives and spherical for vertical, influenced by the container’s dimensions.

That wasn’t financially possible. So we shot digitally on full frame, mimicking the anamorphic aesthetic, which gave us greater flexibility in post. The larger sensor size let us incorporate the characters’ environment as part of the storytelling.

Most scenes were shot using natural light. Camera movements are subtle, mostly locked onto the characters and only moving when they do. I avoided flashy trends in favor of a raw, immersive energy.

If you could do it again — what would you change?

I would rethink some of the production and crew choices, and optimize the shoot setup.

What’s next for you?

I want to make my first feature film, which I’m currently developing.