When I Get Out (Ko pridem ven)

Slovenia, 2025, 106'
Directed by: Metod Pevec
Premiere of a documentary feature film

Cankarjev dom Cinema When I Get Out (Ko pridem ven)

Written by: Metod Pevec, Olga Michalik
Co-writer: Vladimir Milošević
Producer: Danijel Hočevar
Director of Photography: Metod Pevec
Camera Operators: Dejan Ulaga, Gaja Naja Rojec
Editing: Olga Michalik
Co-editing: Ivo Trajkov
Colorist: Emil Svetlik
Sound Designer: Julij Zornik

Production: Vertigo Ljubljana
In co-production with: RTV Slovenija
In cooperation with: FS Viba film
Financial support: Slovenian Film Centre, Public Agency of the Republic of Slovenia

A director and a psychiatrist visit the central Slovenian prison in Dob. The director believes the place also contains locked up stories, while the psychiatrist believes that, through his psychodrama method, he can create a liberating creative space for the inmates and offer them a perspective for the future. A liberated zone within a closed facility?

“All crimes are welcome." Words such as these were also uttered during auditions at Slovenia’s main prison in Dob. Most of the inmates who signed up for the year and a half long experiment with a psychiatrist and a film camera had been convicted of the most serious offences: drug trafficking, migrant smuggling, armed robbery, sexual offences, and murder.
In lengthy psychodrama sessions, this group of very different inmates retraced their journey from childhood to an uncertain future after serving their sentences. It turns out that a criminal identity is not a trivial matter, as it often appears in true-crime reporting; nor can it be pinned on a single person. At least the father and son are to blame, but others and other factors are implicated as well. Sentenced to 30, 20, 17, 15… a total of 105 years in prison, sooner or later they hit existential rock bottom. There is no money, no gangster pride, no friendship; there is so little, or nothing, that a surprising need for spirituality and creativity emerges. That was where we met.

I’m increasingly convinced that the best starting point for a documentary film is not fully understanding something, yet being irresistibly drawn to it. When I first visited Dob prison, I met some very special people. I saw them as characters, as heroes I would love to write about myself – if I knew how. As life is a better storyteller, I returned there as a documentary filmmaker. And, of course, as an adventurer, since at the outset I had no idea who would even join our psychodrama and film project.
Which of these prisoners would agree, with an uncovered face and genuine interest, to meet a psychiatrist and a film camera? To share their trauma, their guilt, to speak about their fears and uncertainties? Many tried, but few stayed, and they are the ones whom I now – after completing the film – consider my friends. I was often struck by the strange and unprofessional feeling that, this time, the film itself was not even the top priority.”
Metod Pevec

Metod Pevec, born in 1958 in Ljubljana, is an established film director, screenwriter, writer, and actor. He has produced a prolific body of work in both fiction and documentary film, most notably Pod njenim oknom (fiction film, 2003), Lahko noč, gospodična (fiction film, 2011), Aleksandrinke (documentary, 2011), Vaje v objemu (fiction film, 2012), Dom (documentary, 2015), and Jaz sem Frenk (fiction film, 2019).
He is the recipient of the Golden Arena Award for Best Director at the Pula Film Festival in 2011 and 2020, for the films Lahko noč, gospodična and Jaz sem Frenk, respectively, as well as several Vesna Awards at the Slovenian Film Festival, including Best Director for Vaje v objemu and Best Documentary Film for Aleksandrinke and Dom (2011, 2015). For his achievements in directing, he received the 2013 Prešeren Fund Award, Slovenia’s highest cultural honour.

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