The 1956 movie was very different from World War II features then familiar to Slovenian audiences. War films of that era tended to focus on the glorious victories of the Partisans. The Valley of Peace, meanwhile, focused on a far more personal story – one with a strongly anti-war message.

The film, directed by France Štiglic, takes place in war-torn Europe and tells its story from the perspective of two children: an orphaned German girl, and a Slovenian refugee boy. Traumatized by the horrors of war, they set out in search of a Valley of Peace that they had only heard about. On the way, they befriend an African-American pilot named Jim. The children discover the fabled valley, but war ultimately spills over even into that peaceful part of the world.

Slovenian moviegoers warmly embraced the film and its allegorical story. The Valley of Peace became the first Slovenian feature to be screened at the Cannes Film Festival, and John Kitzmiller’s convincing performance as Pilot Jim made him the first Black actor to win the Best Actor Award at the festival. (He went on to appear in the James Bond film Dr. No and numerous other films before his early death at the age of 51.) The movie was screened as part of the main program at Cannes – a feat no other Slovenian feature-length film would ever repeat.

The Valley of Peace’s status as a classic was reinforced in 2016, when the feature was screened as a part of a retrospective in Cannes alongside with films by the likes of Godard and Forman – making Štiglic’s feature one of the few Slovenian films to stand alongside the world’s best-loved classics.