"Between the scenes, between the voices. Unseen footage of the future sound of Slovakia"
In 2024, during an artistic residency at Periférne Centrá (Dúbravica, Slovakia), Cristian Estrella filmed the folkumentary „Medzi dolinami, medzi vŕški, po stopách budúceho zvuku Slovenska“ while producing the album "The Future Sound of Slovakia Vol.1" by Mira Tus Manos. But every film leaves scenes out. What doesn't fit due to time, rhythm, or because the main story needs to go elsewhere.
Medzi scénami medzi hlasmi is exactly those outtakes: already edited material that no one had seen, divided into two parts —SIDE A and SIDE B— where artists from Argentina, England, France, Catalonia, Amsterdam, New Zealand, and Slovakia speak not only about the project but also about their own artistic practices, personal stories, and internal maps.
Far from being a continuation, this film is a mosaic where daily activities and the voices of its protagonists take center stage. Through them, themes emerge such as immigration in Slovakia, connection with nature, moving from the city to a rural environment, art and the environment, cultural integration, war and peace, tradition and modernity. Also appearing are land art, Sergio's stencils, Dodo's metalwork, Igor's woodwork, Verónika's cocoons, the Spolok association and its relationship with the Slovak community in Argentina, La Casa Tomada in Nová Baňa, the film's translation by Sveto, the sound of the future, Oto's bees in outer space, UFOs, life on other planets, and Marc-Eric's round house.
Because sometimes, what is on the edges of the frame is what best explains the center: the collective spirit of a work.
Medzi scénami medzi hlasmi is an invitation to look at what the cameras kept recording. To listen to what was not said out loud. And to inhabit the margins, which in this film become the new focus.
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Cristian EstrellaDirector
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Cristian EstrellaWriter
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Cristian EstrellaProducer
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Project Type:Documentary, Feature
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Genres:Tradition, future, ecology, art
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Runtime:2 hours 13 minutes 14 seconds
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Completion Date:June 7, 2026
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Production Budget:500 USD
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Country of Origin:Slovakia
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Country of Filming:Argentina, France, Netherlands, Slovakia, Spain
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Language:English, French, Slovak, Spanish
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Shooting Format:Mobile phones
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Aspect Ratio:16:9
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Film Color:Color
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First-time Filmmaker:Yes
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Student Project:No
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Digital Cinema Package:Unavailable
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Festival De Indie
India
Official Selection -
Spring Film Festival of Kerala
India
Official Selection
Cristian Estrella is a multidisciplinary artist born in Buenos Aires and based in Europe since 2015. His work navigates between audio, image, and nature, driven by hybrid forms of storytelling. His practice spans music, sound design, video, and radio.
As a musician, he develops projects such as Mira Tus Manos (whose album The Future Sound of Slovakia Vol.1 was on the longlist of the RadioHead Awards 2026), It Rises All Nectar, and his solo project through which he composes ambient, acoustic music, and piano songs.
In film, he composed the soundtrack for the documentary Návšteva (2024) and directed, wrote, edited, and produced „Medzi dolinami, medzi vŕški, po stopách budúceho zvuku Slovenska“ (2024), Official Selection at the ICJ Award, official selection at the Egyptian/American Film Festival New York 2025, finalist at the 6th International Festival of New Non-Fiction Narratives in Rosario (Argentina 2025), Recognition Award at The Indie FEST Film Awards California 2026, three awards at the Travancore International Film Awards, and winner of the Golden Lion International Film Festival 2026.
He is currently developing Casa con piano (a book, documentary film, and album) based on a 5,000 km journey through Catalonia, France, and Slovakia. He has also participated in historical music archive recovery projects, worked as a creative in advertising, and led radio workshops for young people from different countries.
Cristian Estrella is an artist with nomadic roots and an archipelago mindset. He does not work from a single medium or language. He moves naturally between music, film, radio, advertising, teaching, and historical memory recovery. But what is most interesting is that he does not do this from an accumulation of skills, but from a genuine need to connect worlds that are often separated: the rural and the urban, the analog and the digital, the local and the global, the Slovak and the Argentine, the intimate and the collective.
His work has a craft and political quality at the same time. Craft because he films with iPhones and action cameras, edits on old MacBooks, composes with what he has close by. Political because he chooses the margins as the focus: the outtakes, the voices that didn't make the final cut, the immigrants, the excursions into nature, the round houses. He does not seek the efficiency of the main narrative; he seeks the truth of what remains floating.
Furthermore, he has an uncommon coherence: he produces records, documentaries, podcasts, fanzines, labels, radio programs… and everything seems to respond to the same question: how do we find each other through art, especially when we come from different places?
His biography shows someone who has transformed the difficulties of being a migrant (in Slovakia, without fully mastering the language) into a sharper perspective on cultural integration. And the fact that he turns the discarded material from his own film into a 2-hour 13-minute work (SIDE A and SIDE B) is a gesture of humility and generosity: what didn't work for one story serves for another, truer one.
In short: a restless, collaborative, poetic, and deeply human artist. One of those who understand that art is not a finished product, but an ongoing conversation.
