The festival will open with the screening of Psycho by Alfred Hitchcock, preceded by a lecture on why people find crime stories so appealing.

As Slovenians recently got their first crime hit with the novel Lake (Jezero) by Tadej Golob and the namesake TV series, a debate with Golob and another author of crime stories, Avgust Demšar, will look into the investigative aspect of writing crime novels.

The history of crime novels in Slovenia will be presented on Thursday before the screening of A Minute for Murder (Minuta za Umor - 1962) by Jane Kavčič, one of the few Slovenian thrillers.

The beginnings of the genre in Slovenian cn be traced back to a series of crime stories by Jakob Alešovec published in the 19th century newspaper Bleiweisove Novice.

But the genre became really became popular only in the 1970s after the success of the TV series Vest in Pločevina (Consciousness and Sheet Metal) by Anton Tomašič.

The festival will also offer an insight into the genre on a global scale, by screening the documentary The Man Who Played with Fire by Henrik Georgsson about the Millennium-trilogy author Stieg Larsson, and classics like Gosford Park (2001) by Robert Altman, The Big Sleep (1946) by Howard Hawks, and L.A. Confidential (1997) by Curtis Hanson.

A debate will also present Raymond Chandler as a founder of the hard-boiled school of detective fiction.

The festival is a joint project of the Slovenian cinematheque and the office of Ljubljana - UNESCO's City of Literature.