IATEFL video competition 2026

Since the beginning of the school year, a group of our second-year students worked on a short video as part of the annual competition organised by the IATEFL organisation in Slovenia.

We are delighted to say that their hard work paid off and they were awarded a gold-level award and named as second place from all the entries put forward from all across Slovenia.

The project began with the students learning about the theme of this year’s competition. For 2026, they had to create a short film in the style of an advertisement with the theme of “R(a)ising Voices” which could be no longer than three minutes in length.

One of the most challenging things about this particular project is that the students had to include a set of ten words in their script for the film. This year, their final piece had to use the words mindset, freedom, predicament, disintegrate, commemorate, separate, appraising, makeshift, willingly, and immaculately.

The students started with a brainstorming session about what the theme could mean and, from early on, they felt that they would go down the route of something about how technology can limit the ability of young people to communicate properly with the real world around them. With the competition theme in mind, they wanted to think about what could be done to make sure that children and teenagers should be able to have their voices heard in their own communities and not be limited to life on their screens.

They worked hard on a script alongside the project mentors from our English department, Blanka Klobučar and Tim Gallagher, and, after several re-writes and discussions about how the language could be used for the best effect and greatest impact, it was time to move on to the filming aspect of the project.

This part brought in both the acting skills of the students, the ability to speak clearly in English, and then the technical side of things when it came to the arranging the filming process and the final edit.

When speaking about their experience, the group said:
When we saw our theme for the video, we were already full of ideas. We agree that the creativity and the openness of the challenge were the fun part, while the strict criteria kept things interesting while also challenging us to make the most of our knowledge of English. We didn't really know how making the video would go, but we were ready to find out as we went along. This allowed us to try new things within the project and explore areas that we hadn’t experienced before. Overall, we are happy we could be a part of the competition and are all very proud of the results.

Congratulations to Arne Brglez, Julija Gorišek, Lev Krznarič, Pia Prevec, and Zoja Sevčnikar, and thanks again to their mentors who worked so hard with them through this school year to achieve this great result.