Austrian filmmaker Andrina Mračnikar, who is part of the Slovenian minority in the Austrian region of Carinthia, has directed Mila/Marija, a film that explores the anti-fascist efforts of a Slovenian partisan before, during, and after World War II. The film premiered at the Zurich Film Festival and follows Mila, who adopts the partisan name Marija, as she joins the Slovenian Partisan Army in Austria and navigates the complex social and political landscape after the war. Mračnikar began researching the topic when she was very young, having previously directed three documentaries about the Slovenian minority in Austria and the partisans. For her film Carinthians Speak German, she conducted interviews with former partisans and survivors of concentration camps, and read literature in Slovene that included first-person accounts from survivors and witnesses. The work of Marjan Linasi, who studied the organization of the resistance and the timing of battles, was especially influential in shaping her approach. Mračnikar emphasized the importance of selecting a specific story from the vast amount of research she had collected, ultimately choosing to focus on a female perspective. She was interested in exploring the decisions made during wartime and their long-term consequences. The film's extended narrative reflects how wartime and political changes affected personal matters like family and love, drawing from her own family's history. The use of language in the film is notable, as the Slovene dialect used differs significantly from standard Slovene and German is depicted as a tool of power. Mračnikar stressed the importance of linguistic accuracy, ensuring that the dialect was portrayed correctly. This involved correcting even minor mistakes through automated dialogue replacement. The film is not based on a single real story but on hundreds of real accounts, making it important that everything in the movie could have happened. The film's lead actress, Doroteja Nadrah, underwent extensive training to accurately portray the Slovene dialect. She studied the dialect for over a year and even spent a week with her dialect coach. She and the actor playing her father, Marko Mandić, practiced speaking only in dialect on the phone to fully immerse themselves in the language. Finding suitable locations for the film was a significant challenge. The family house needed to be old but accessible, and the surrounding area should not be too modern. The house they found was surrounded by woods and lacked electricity, requiring the team to bring in electricity. The house was also special because it needed to be depicted in three different states: before the war, immediately after, and a bit later. The location was historically significant as it was in an area where partisan fights occurred. Local residents often shared the history of the houses and landscapes, providing insight into the events that took place there.