DISAPPEARING

This autobiographical documentary film by Andrina Mračnikar examines East-West relations within Austria. During what is known as the "Ortstafelsturm" (German for the assault of local placename signs), as these pogrom-like excesses in Southern Carinthia would go down in history, Austrian hardliners engaged in violent actions against the rights of the Slovenian ethnic group to use their own language, as guaranteed in the Austrian State Treaty of 1955. As film scholar Valerie Dirk would later write in Der Standard: "For the Mračnikar family, the symbol for the hostility is a dead horse. It was hanged in the barn by unknown persons during the events of the 1972 'Ortstafelsturm'. There were no consequences for the horse killers."