It’s 1943, and a 20-year-old woman by the name of Mila takes on the partisan name Marija – like the “mother of God herself”, exclaims one of her comrades. After watching her family – from a Slovene minority – be forcibly deported out of Austria’s southern region of Carinthia, she joins her brother Hanzi (Austrian indie-pop artist Oskar Haag) in the anti-Nazi Slovenian Partisan Army and thus truly becomes Marija. Of the same heritage background as her protagonist, Andrina Mračnikar signs Mila/Marija – the titular character being based on many true stories and accounts – as her sophomore feature-length fiction effort, following three documentaries on the Slovene minority in Austria.

Mila/Marija had its world premiere in the Feature Film Competition of the 22nd Zurich Film Festival. There, it clutched the festival’s Audience Award, as selected by viewers from among all 28 competition entries, be they fiction or documentary (see the news). Led by versatile Slovenian actress Doroteja Nadrah as Mila, the narrative, centred on a woman’s perspective and the impossible choices she must make between personal desire and political conviction, makes it an accessible and easily appreciated tale.

While Mračnikar sheds light on the significance of the Slovene minority’s contribution to the resistance in an audience-friendly manner, the material nonetheless yearns for a grittier and less polished tone. Many of the movie’s defining moments are relegated to dialogue, rather than demonstration: the stakes of this immense resistance – whose significance cannot be understated, Mračnikar implores – otherwise feel lost to timing and scene choice. The filmmaker’s truly fascinating conceit thus remains lathered with a veneer too glossy for the truth it seeks to depict.

Among the partisans, Mila finds illicit love with a fellow fighter, Lenart (Petja Labović) – illicit because relationships are expressly forbidden in order to focus on the resistance – and quickly rises through the ranks after being sent to a partisan school in Solčava and undertaking a number of daring missions. However, with a lack of meaningful visual moments showing just why Mila is such a potent leader and figure, it becomes difficult to project a vision of her beyond what we are told on screen.

Following the war’s end at the film’s two-thirds mark, the movie shifts in tone, forcing Mila to contend with the post-war period: the joy following the defeat of fascism but also the fallout that comes with it. Their community suffers discrimination, and her actions, once virtuous, are now seen as traitorous – including by her father (Marko Mandić), who blames her for certain terrible events. When her personal and ethical stakes are raised in this era, Mila/Marija starts to come alive, although the film ends before we can explore them in greater depth.

Cinematographer Georg Weiss (the DoP of Perla) offers us a taste of something visually beautiful, particularly the film’s blue-toned dusky shots, low-lit night scenes and sweeping landscape views. However, the feature struggles to escape a neatness that hampers the believability: for instance, the clothing often seems too pristine and the battle scenes too structured to convey the harsh conditions under which the partisans were operating with great efficacy.

Mila/Marija is an Austrian-Slovenian-Greek production by Amour Fou Vienna GmbH and Vertigo Ljubljana, in co-production with Indigo View and Ruth Beckermann Filmproduktion. Its world sales are managed by Minerva Pictures International and TVCO.