The cinema is temporarily closed for renovations and will reopen after August 2nd.

Son of Saul Saul fia

László Nemes / Hungary / 2015 / 107 min / Hungarian, German, Polish, Russian, Yiddish

IMDb

The DVD of the film is available in our Bookshop. (List of available DVDs in Slovene only)

An uncompromising account of the life in a Nazi concentration camp, Son of Saul tells the story about finding hope in the darkest moments of human history.

October 1944, Auschwitz-Birkenau. Saul Ausländer is a Hungarian member of the Sonderkommando, the group of Jewish prisoners isolated from the camp and forced to assist the Nazis in the machinery of large-scale extermination. While working in one of the crematoriums, Saul discovers the corpse of a boy he takes for his son. Saul decides to carry out an impossible task: save the child’s body from the flames, find a rabbi to recite the mourner’s Kaddish and offer the boy a proper burial.

"I have always found movies about the camps frustrating. They attempt to build stories of survival and heroism, but in my mind they are in fact recreating a mythical conception of the past. The Sonderkommando accounts are on the contrary concrete, present and tangible. They precisely describe, in the here and now, the “normal” functioning of a death factory, with its organization, its rules, work cadences, shifts, hazards, and its maximum productivity. In fact, the SS used the word Stück (parts) when speaking about corpses. Corpses were produced in that factory. These accounts allowed me to see it all through the eyes of the extermination camps’ damned."
- László Nemes

László Nemes
Born in Budapest in 1977, Nemes spent his adolescence and young adulthood in Paris, having followed his mother who started a new life in the French capital in 1989. He first studied history and political studies, then cinema at the Sorbonne. While shooting The Man from London (2007) as Béla Tarr’s assistant, Nemes came across a book about Sonderkommandos, on which he based Son of Saul, his feature debut.

Kinodvor. Newsletter.

Join our mailing list and receive details of upcoming films and events!

What's On

Film Under the Stars / Avant Premiere

Dreams (Sex Love) Drømmer

Dag Johan Haugerud

Saturday, 19. 07. 2025 / 21:30 / The Ljubljana Castle

Johanne falls in love for the first time… with her teacher. To preserve her overwhelming experience, she entrusts her feelings to paper. When her mother and grandmother read her writings, they are initially shocked by its intimate content but soon see its literary potential… »Refreshingly unexpected, Dag Johan Haugerud’s Dreams breathes new life into the often oversimplified genre of sexual awakening that seems to draw on his twinned career in both cinema and books.«Deadline. Golden Bear at the last Berlinale.

Conclave Conclave

Edward Berger

Sunday, 20. 07. 2025 / 21:30 / The Ljubljana Castle

When Cardinal Lawrence takes charge of one of the world’s most secretive and ancient procedures—the selection of a new Pope—he finds himself entangled in intrigues and scandals that could shake the very foundations of the Catholic Church. Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.

How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies Lahn Mah

Pat Boonnitipat

Monday, 21. 07. 2025 / 21:30 / The Ljubljana Castle

A young Thai director wraps important questions about family, intergenerational ties, and the pursuit of happiness into a touching dramedy that broke all box office records at home and became a cultural phenomenon. Bring your grandma – and don’t forget the tissues!