Synopsis

In The Basics of Killing, Jan Cvitkovič, one of Slovenia’s most renowned filmmakers, tells the story of a seemingly well-situated family, which loses the ground under its feet within the shortest time. In doing so, the film tells a classic parable of what European societies are like today, where something similar like that always seems possible. “Financial security” looked like a banal slogan of banks and insurances for a long time, far away from reality. But when philosophy teacher Marko, and few days later his wife Dunja, who is a pharmacist, are fired, the couple – banking on their blind trust in state welfare – faces an unpleasant fact: there is no social network for formerly well-earning people, not even if they have two children. What at first seems completely absurd is becoming a bitter factum with time. The director describes his film as a development process with four stages: the idyll, the crisis, the collapse and the catharsis, and according to Cvitkovič, the latter is already evident in the first scene. However, at this point in time, the protagonist doesn’t realise that his life is going to be sliding from theory into practice within a very short time span and that he would find himself in a process in which his idyllic family is threatened to fall apart.