Lost Years

by Áron Horváth Botka

Izgubljena leta, fiction, c, 90 min
In progress

SI, RS, HU

Borš, a grocery store clerk from a small Serbian town in the late 90’s, meets Tana, a young woman from Hungary, and joins her on a quest to find her lost backpack. On their journey through the Serbian countryside, an unexpected friendship blossoms which changes the directions of both of their lives.

screenwriter
Áron Horváth Botka
director
Áron Horváth Botka
producers
Jerca Jerič, Andraž Jerič
co-producers
Miloš Ivanović, Andrijana Sofranić Šućur
director of photography
Domen Martinčič
film editor
Andrej Avanzo
production designer
Jelena Terzić Stanković
costume designer
Ina Ferlan
key make-up artist
Jovana Vukosavljević
sound designer
Julij Zornik

featuring
Aleksza Szekely, Lilla Kizlinger, Andraž Jug, Attila Mess, Tibor Szloboda

production
Temporama
co-production
RTV Slovenija, Set Sail Films
in collaboration with
Film Studio Viba Film
co-funding
Slovenian Film Centre, Creative Europe - MEDIA, Re-Act, Film Center Serbia

Temporama
Andraž Jerič
andraz@temporama.si

Aron Horvath was born in 1991 in Slovenia to a bilingual family and grew up as part of the Hungarian minority. He graduated in film directing in 2016 at the Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television in Ljubljana, followed by a master’s degree in film studies in 2021. Since 2015 he has directed a number of short films, including his latest film “Bits” which premiered in 2020 at the 23rd Festival of Slovenian Film where it won the Best Short Film award and later screened at numerous festivals across the world. His upcoming film “Lost Years” will be his feature-length directorial debut.

““Lost Years” is a story that has been on my mind for the past ten years. I began writing it as a creative exercise within the road-movie genre, but it soon became clear that something far more personal was taking shape. The script is based on fragments of childhood memories: carefree summers spent at my grandmother’s house in Vojvodina, and the sense of safety my family gave me even then, during the uncertain period that marked the Balkans in the 1990s. At first, these memories felt ordinary—perhaps even insignificant—but over time I came to realize that this period profoundly shaped me. “Lost Years” will be a collage of memories, a kind of time capsule built from small, seemingly unnoticed moments that are, in fact, essential to the experience of coming of age.”

Temporama has been working with the new generation of up-and-coming Slovenian film-makers since 2013. They’ve produced a number of short and experimental films, music videos, and webseries before transitioning to feature films with “Consequences” (Toronto IFF 2018). Their recent credits include the documentary film “Alpe-Adria Underground!” (DokuFest Prizren 2024) and “Ida Who Sang So Badly Even the Dead Rose Up and Joined Her in Song” (Torino FF 2025), with several other titles currently in production or development.