Der Kärntner spricht deutsch

"When we die, the Nazis will tell their story again," an old woman explains when asked by the director why she recalls images that are a visible burden to her. The film concentrates entirely on the characters and their accounts, from which a collective narrative is formed. This narrative is directed by Mračnikar, as she introduces themes such as gender relations among partisans, questions what has been said and takes the events of the past into the present. After the war, many Austrians resented the Carinthian Slovenes for having fought against Hitler. The fight for bilingualism reached a climax in the "Ortstafelsturm" (run on the road signs) of 1972, which is also discussed here. A large part of these memories would have been irretrievably lost today if Andrina Mračnikar hadn't recorded them. Her filmic examination of the memories impressively shows that even the young generation can’t possess a national identity without knowledge of the past. GL