Drifting through the densely forested landscape of southern Slovenia—GREETINGS FROM FREE FORESTS, like a lifting fog, reveals a refuge of embedded historical memory. The film travels alongside the testimonies of local hunters, foresters, cavers, and foragers among others—orbiting around an absence left by radical struggle after it has come to fruition and since faded.

During WWII, this forest served as a sanctuary for the Partisan Liberation Front, who were resisting the Fascist occupation of Yugoslavia. Remnants of this event can still be found throughout the forest in various states of decay, but also within images that sought to preserve the revolution’s emancipatory energy for future generations; images now stored in an underground film archive buried within the forest itself, depicting both the violence and the hope that came with radical change.

ian soroka (b. 1987) works in non-fiction forms of film and video. RSVP here.