
Acting
Slavoj Žižek
Born 1949-03-21 · Ljubljana, Slovenia
A Slovenian continental philosopher and critical theorist working in the traditions of Hegelianism, Marxism and Lacanian psychoanalysis. He has made contributions to political theory, film theory, and theoretical psychoanalysis. Žižek is a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, and a professor at the European Graduate School. He has been a visiting professor at, among others, the University of Chicago, Columbia University, London Consortium, Princeton, New York University, The New School, the University of Minnesota, the University of California, Irvine and the University of Michigan. He is currently the International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at Birkbeck, University of London and president of the Society for Theoretical Psychoanalysis, Ljubljana. Žižek uses examples from popular culture to explain the theory of Jacques Lacan and uses Lacanian psychoanalysis, Hegelian philosophy and Marxist economic criticism to interpret and speak extensively on immediately current social phenomena.
Acting credits
5.5A mind-bending love story following Greg who, after recently being divorced and then fired, meets the mysterious Isabel, a woman living on the streets and convinced that the polluted, broken world around them is just a computer simulation. Doubtful at first, Greg eventually discovers there may be some truth to Isabel’s wild conspiracy.
Bliss
2021
6.5No synopsis available yet.
Die Macht des Rings
2026
NRA film on time and narrative by Christopher Roth with Armen Avanessian. Hyperstitional thinking hijacks the present-forming daring interventions into conditions of cybernetic governance that foreclose contingency.
Hyperstition
2015
7.3A hilarious introduction, using as examples some of the best films ever made, to some of Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst Slavoj Žižek's most exciting ideas on personal subjectivity, fantasy and reality, desire and sexuality.
The Pervert's Guide to Cinema
2006
6.8ŽIŽEK! trails the thinker as he crisscrosses the globe, racing from New York City lecture halls, through the streets of Buenos Aires, and even stopping at home in Ljubljana, Slovenia. All the while Žižek obsessively reveals the invisible workings of ideology through his unique blend of Lacanian psychoanalysis, Marxism, and critique of pop culture.
Žižek!
2005
6.6Filmmaker Hermann Vaske explores the creative Balkan world in the hopes of understanding the meaning of "Balkan spirit".
Balkan Spirit
2013
7.7The cold war, the space race, and NASA’s moon landing are landmark events that defined an era. But they are also fodder for conspiracy theories. In Houston, We Have a Problem! filmmaker Žiga Virc adds new material to the discussion on both fronts. This intriguing docu-fiction explores the myth of the secret multi-billion-dollar deal behind America’s purchase of Yugoslavia’s clandestine space program in the early 1960s.
Houston, We Have a Problem!
2016
7.3A journey into the labyrinthine heart of ideology, which shapes and justifies both collective and personal beliefs and practices: with an infectious zeal and voracious appetite for popular culture, Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst Slavoj Žižek analyzes several of the most important films in the history of cinema to explain how cinematic narrative helps to reinforce prevailing ethics and political ideas.
The Pervert's Guide to Ideology
2012
4.0A documentary celebrating the work of Walerian Borowczyk, a director of unparalleled sensitivity, revered in the 1970s, who was later labeled as a maker of erotic movies.
Love Express. The Disappearance of Walerian Borowczyk
2018
6.6Capturing the story of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange with unprecedented access, director Laura Poitras finds herself caught between the motives and contradictions of Assange and his inner circle in a documentary portrait of power, betrayal, truth and sacrifice.
Risk
2017
NRThe Title Was Shot was commissioned for a conference of film theoreticians in Berlin in 2009 entitled: The Cinematic Configurations of 'I' and 'We.' Composed of fragments from over 25 films dating from the 1920s to the 90s, this mischievous short features cowboys, Indians and damsels in distress. Tarzan, Jane, a transgender gorilla, and a menacing lion tango from frame to frame, prodded by Wittgenstein, Gilles Deleuze and Slavoj Zizek's philosophical considerations. A fast-paced, heart-pounding cinephilic farce.
The Title Was Shot
2009
NRWhat happens when after the Wonderland, Alice finds herself in the post-Brexit United Kingdom? Philosophy student Alice’s world is turned upside down on the morning after a masquerade party when her soulmate Rabbit whom she found the previous night has disappeared into thin air without leaving a trace after the crazy night, as befits the mysticism of the 21st century.
Alice, Through the Looking
2021
6.5In 1794, French revolutionary Maximilien Robespierre produced the world's first defense of "state terror" - claiming that the road to virtue lay through political violence. This film combines drama, archive and documentary interviews to examine Robespierre's year in charge of the Committee Of Public Safety - the powerful state machine at the heart of Revolutionary France. Contesting Robespierre's legacy is Slavoj Zizek, who argues that terror in the cause of virtue is justifiable, and Simon Schama, who believes the road from Robespierre ran straight to the gulag and the 20th-century concentration camp. The drama, based on original sources, follows the life-and-death politics of the Committee during "Year Two" of the new Republic.
Terror! Robespierre and the French Revolution
2009
6.5Examined Life pulls philosophy out of academic journals and classrooms, and puts it back on the streets. Offering privileged moments with great thinkers from fields ranging from moral philosophy to cultural theory, Examined Life reveals philosophy's power to transform the way we see the world around us and imagine our place in it.
Examined Life
2008
NRThe Swap is the third chapter of the PolEc Trilogy, comprising Wandering Marxwards (1998) and The Three Failures (2006). It features the same character as in the previous episodes, but now reduced to a lost, exhausted soul roaming Shanghai's cityscape from the remotest periphery to the financial district. Another narrative, spoken this one, takes us to September 2008, as gigantic bailouts put the financial system on life support instead of letting it collapse, thus seizing our reality and replacing it with a fiction tailored for the situation. These two streams end up meeting on a Shanghai dancefloor, where unresolved contradictions can finally be performed.
The Swap
2016
5.8A look at different matters of the world such as immigration, global warming and capitalism through the eyes of scientists and philosophers.
The Possibility of Hope
2007
7.0In the video film shots from the tour are interspersed with acted scenes, video clips and theoretical reflections of Slavoj Žižek and critic Chris Bohn. Together they form a compelling story about Laibach, controversial Slovene music group in the eighties.
Laibach – A Film from Slovenia
1993
6.8The creators of Debtocracy, analyze the shifting of state assets to private hands. They travel round the world gathering data on privatization and search for clues on the day after Greece's massive privatization program.
Catastroika
2012
6.9A visceral documentary focusing on the Slovenian collective art movement known as NSK ('Neue Slowenische Kunst') and its varied branches: 'Laibach', 'Irwin', and 'Red Pilot'.
Predictions of Fire
1996
NRA creative documentary about becoming a parent... and how to reconceive yourself. Fiction director Josh Appignanesi turns the camera on himself and his wife as they undergo the ordeal of becoming parents in the era of man-children and assisted reproduction. Faced with fatherhood, Josh spirals comically into an envious career funk. But life-threatening complications emerge- the couple are tested to the brink, confronting shattering losses. It's a portrait of our generation going through a revolution in reproduction- forced to find new ways to think about ourselves as creative beings. We hear from Slavoj Žižek, John Berger, Darian Leader (20,000 Days) and Zadie Smith. Universal yet still taboo, it's a film for everyone who has children, wants them, or still feels like a child themselves.
The New Man
2016
NRPhilosopher Slavoj Žižek is our guide through landscapes of classic film, music, social media, archive and webcasts. Making unexpected twists and turns, he maps the utopian illusions of our times. Through absurd juxtapositions and startling insights, we are seduced into recognising our fate, in order to change it.
The Pervert's Guide to Utopias
2026
6.3Marx Reloaded is a cultural documentary that examines the relevance of German socialist and philosopher Karl Marx's ideas for understanding the global economic and financial crisis of 2008-09. The crisis triggered the deepest global recession in 70 years and prompted the US government to spend more than 1 trillion dollars in order to rescue its banking system from collapse. Today the full implications of the crisis in Europe and around the world still remain unclear. Nevertheless, should we accept the crisis as an unfortunate side-effect of the free market? Or is there another explanation as to why it happened and its likely effects on our society, our economy and our whole way of life?
Marx Reloaded
2011
10.0On February, April 19, 2019, Dr. Jordan B. Peterson debated Marxist philosopher Dr. Slavoj Zizek.
Happiness: Capitalism vs. Marxism
2019
5.5Based on motifs from The Triple Life of Antigone by Slavoj Žižek, this film reflects on today’s planet and political “chaos” by placing the politicians, the decision-makers and the influencers of today in the roles of Žižek’s version of the ancient Greek drama Antigone. But what are the politicians roles? Does the Antigone of today represent populists, anti-migrants and fundamentalists, or those who would oppose them?
Antigone, How Dare We!
2020
Behind the camera
7.3A hilarious introduction, using as examples some of the best films ever made, to some of Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst Slavoj Žižek's most exciting ideas on personal subjectivity, fantasy and reality, desire and sexuality.
The Pervert's Guide to Cinema
2006
7.3A journey into the labyrinthine heart of ideology, which shapes and justifies both collective and personal beliefs and practices: with an infectious zeal and voracious appetite for popular culture, Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst Slavoj Žižek analyzes several of the most important films in the history of cinema to explain how cinematic narrative helps to reinforce prevailing ethics and political ideas.
The Pervert's Guide to Ideology
2012
3.0Can you ever fall in love with the perfect person?
Professor Slavoj Žižek on the Problem with Online Dating
2024
10.0On February, April 19, 2019, Dr. Jordan B. Peterson debated Marxist philosopher Dr. Slavoj Zizek.
Happiness: Capitalism vs. Marxism
2019
6.8In this tour de force filmed lecture, Slavoj Žižek lucidly and compellingly reflects on belief - which takes him from Father Christmas to democracy - and on the various forms that belief takes, drawing on Lacanian categories of thought. In a radical dismissal of todays so called post-political era, he mobilizes the paradox of universal truth urging us to dare to enact the impossible. It is a characteristic virtuoso performance, moving promiscuously from subject to subject but keeping the larger argument in view.
Slavoj Zizek: The Reality of the Virtual
2004