Ziga Ciber lifts the veil on his YDA win

Have you always wanted to direct and what has your journey been like so far?  

I think film found me before I really knew I wanted to become a director. My favourite film as a child was Indiana Jones. I told everyone that I was going to become an archaeologist because I thought he was the coolest person in the world. Looking back, it was really a love for film that started there.  

Growing up in Slovenia with a rare elbow condition meant several surgeries and long periods spent in hospitals, at home and in physiotherapy. As I couldn't always spend time with other children, films became my company. I grew up watching Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy with my parents, and later discovered filmmakers such as Scorsese, Hitchcock and Orson Welles. 

When I was thinking about what kind of documentary I could make, I kept coming back to asbestos and the presence it had in the landscape I grew up seeing.

My journey has been somewhat unconventional. I studied mechanical engineering, specialising in energy, while constantly looking for ways to connect it with my passion for film. During my studies, I worked at Kinodvor, Ljubljana's city cinema, which was probably my favourite job I've ever had. I was constantly watching films there, sometimes even seeing the same film more than 20 times. Later, I interned at the Austrian Film Museum in Vienna, working with film restoration and the preservation of film archives.  

Eventually, filmmaking became more than just something I loved watching. I started my studies at the National Film School at IADT (Ireland) and began making films myself. 

What does it mean to you to win a YDA?  

Winning a YDA is, of course, an incredible honour and a huge joy for me. It means a lot to have the film recognised in this way, especially because it is such a personal project.

At the same time, the experience has opened up new opportunities and allowed me to meet so many inspiring people from different parts of the industry. The event itself was a great opportunity to connect with filmmakers, producers, creatives, and other young talents whose work I really admire. I met many people I would genuinely love to collaborate with in the future, and I hope some of these new connections will grow into future projects. 

Above: Director Ziga Ciber, whose film White Veil won a YDA Gold in the Film School - up to 10 mins category. 

How did your idea for Bela Koprena (White Veil) evolve and how did the film come to exist?  

Bela Koprena (White Veil) began as my documentary module project during my second year at the National Film School at IADT in Ireland. When I was thinking about what kind of documentary I could make, I kept coming back to asbestos and the presence it had in the landscape I grew up seeing. Asbestos was almost an ordinary part of the visual environment in the 1990s, something we saw everywhere, often without thinking much about what it actually was.

What initially seemed like a local story about old roofs became, for me, a much more intimate story about the places we encounter and the things we carry with us...

As a child of the 90s, I remember living with a quiet, persistent fear in my head: the fear of asbestos roof panels that still covered countless buildings in my surroundings, decades after their use had been banned. At the time, I didn't fully understand the science behind it, but I knew these roofs were dangerous and everywhere.

Years later, as a mechanical engineering student working in a thermal power plant, I encountered that fear again in a much more direct way. We were tasked with demolishing several old structures under the plant’s jurisdiction. These buildings were still roofed with asbestos-cement panels. One of my coworkers, who was younger than me, broke them apart with almost alarming enthusiasm. I put on a mask, stepped back, and tried to explain to him just how dangerous that was.

He dismissed my concern, saying that asbestos had simply lost its market value, and that “they had to make something up” that this was supposedly how the idea that asbestos was carcinogenic was born. With that, he went back to smashing the panels into dust.

Even years later, that memory has stayed with me as if it happened yesterday. What struck me was not only the danger itself, but the strange relationship people can have with something that is both completely ordinary and potentially deadly. These roofs are so familiar that they can almost disappear from our awareness.

We hear only silent testimonies: the voices of people who once worked in the factory or who still live in its shadow. 

There was also a much more personal connection. My grandfather died of lung cancer. He was a smoker, but he also spent much of his free time crafting gutters, often working directly on asbestos rooftops. We don't know what ultimately caused his illness, but the possibility and knowing he was working with these materials became an important emotional layer for me.

The film came into existence through this combination of personal experience, my connection to the landscape, and the opportunity I had at IADT to explore the subject through documentary filmmaking. What initially seemed like a local story about old roofs became, for me, a much more intimate story about the places we encounter and the things we carry with us, sometimes without even realising it. 

Bela Koprena (White Veil) captures human stories without ever showing a person on screen, what was your reasoning behind telling the story this way? 

I wanted to create a film that observes only the beauty of the landscape; a landscape that has been poisoned for more than a century by an asbestos factory and, today, by an incinerator of hazardous and toxic waste. We hear only silent testimonies: the voices of people who once worked in the factory or who still live in its shadow. The absence of faces reflects the harsh reality of lives erased from public memory. It does not matter who tells this story, because everyone living within the reach of the factory shares the same fate. Each of them has lost someone they loved to it, in many cases, entire families.

I met wonderful, brave people whom I have grown incredibly fond of, and I feel very privileged that they were willing to share such personal stories and experiences with me.

What were the highlights and unexpected challenges?

One of the biggest highlights and also one of the unexpected challenges was filming around the factory. There were moments when it was genuinely quite tense, but that also made the experience incredibly exciting and memorable.

Another major challenge was earning people's trust and getting them to open up and share their stories with me. At the beginning, that was probably the most difficult and intimidating part of the process. In the end, however, it became the most beautiful part of the entire experience. I met wonderful, brave people whom I have grown incredibly fond of, and I feel very privileged that they were willing to share such personal stories and experiences with me.

Some of the most meaningful moments in the film came from simply being there, observing and allowing the story to reveal itself.

The production itself was also quite unusual. Since I study in Ireland while the story is set in Slovenia, I was essentially a one-man band throughout much of the pre-production and production. I was the writer, director, producer, and cinematographer, which was challenging, but also gave me an incredible amount of freedom. I could follow my instincts, change direction when something unexpected happened, and simply walk or drive around with my camera, looking for ways to visually connect all the things I wanted to say with the film.

That freedom was probably one of the things I enjoyed most. I didn't always know exactly what I was looking for, but I could trust my instincts and respond to what was happening in front of me. In the end, some of the most meaningful moments in the film came from simply being there, observing and allowing the story to reveal itself.