Gregor Božič is a film director and a fruit tree enthusiast whose work with images, stories and trees moves fluidly between worlds we often consider separate: the cultivated and the wild, the ordinary and the uncommon, the botanical and the cultural. His two practices—one rooted in hands-on collaboration with landscapes, the other immersed in an artistic and reflective engagement with imagination and storytelling—intersect in surprising and generative ways. In the village of Kojsko in Goriška Brda—a hilly region on the border between Slovenia and Italy, near Topolò, in the direction of Gorizia—Gregor is taking care of a special orchard with more than 300 fruit trees, collecting old, autochthonous, and disappearing varieties of fruit. This piece of terraced land which extends in less than a hectare is becoming a genetic bank of fruit varieties that are vanishing from both the local and global landscape, and are largely ignored by the market. Here, every tree has its own story, and every fruit its special taste.

Gregor envisions it as an agro-cultural meeting place—a space where cultivation becomes a form of storytelling, and where trees grow alongside ideas, memories, and exchanges. Our conversation with him arises not only from the Uncommon Fruits project, which he helped shape and enliven, but also from his subtle insistence on seeing fruit—and, perhaps, the world itself—differently. With him, fruit is never just something to eat or sell; it is a stimulus for thought, a vessel of history, a spark for imagination. It is in this uncommon vision, where cultivation meets imagination, that we meet him today.
We met one late-summer day among the trees, in his orchard.

Dora Ciccone: How was this orchard created? Why exactly here, and what does this place mean to you?

Gregor Božič: The orchard was created in the village of Kojsko in Goriška Brda, on the land that my mother, uncle, and aunt inherited from my grandmother, who lived there. When I started thinking about the orchard, the land was already overgrown. The spot where the orchard is located faces north, so there was never much grapevine there—the vineyards were reserved for better, southern-facing plots. But there was fruit: cherries, apricots, pears, and occasionally a fig. Orchards in Brda were made by hand, without machines, and the terrain was varied and uneven, so the trees were planted irregularly—one large cherry, one smaller pear. I remember that from childhood.

Those cherries were huge, the kind you hardly see anymore. They grew on wild rootstocks—people would dig up wild cherries in the forest, transplant them, let them grow for a few years, and then graft them with the variety they wanted. It was a long process, but that’s how they initially raised strong trees that grew tall into the sky. No one pruned them, except at the beginning to shape the crown. The cherries were picked collectively, climbing the trees. And there were a lot of them. I remember a čempevka, a later-season cherry variety, picked by the whole family, sometimes even with neighbors. The cherries were then laid out on a table to check for any bad ones, and then sold.

The trees weren’t sprayed because there was no money. Maybe only in winter, against mold. After the war, the first chemicals for cherry fly appeared, but they were hard to use because the trees had such tall, massive crowns that you couldn’t reach them with a tractor. So everything was organic—per forza, out of necessity.

These trees bore abundantly, even though no one took special care of them. Later, when my grandparents were getting older, even less so. At that time, I was living in Berlin, and I realized how hard it was to find good, flavorful fruit and vegetables. What was available was expensive, whereas at home fruit was abundant, falling to the ground and nobody picked it up. I asked at home what happened to the fruit, and I realized that most orchards had been abandoned. My grandmother’s children had moved to the cities, and no one dealt with this land anymore, except my uncle.

My grandmother, who lived to be a hundred, remembered all of this very well. These people had a very special relationship with the trees. They knew exactly where each tree was because they had lived with them for so long. The trees were like pets or family members. Where we kept tools, there was a kazon, a barn. Next to it was a cherry, a vidona, and a pear, perifigi. My grandmother remembered everything. The trees lived so long that she knew them—they had been planted by her grandfather, and my mother remembered them too. I was the first generation that didn’t see these trees, the first not actively working the land—the generation of children born in the 1980s.

I started thinking about what could be done. My father and I first planted two trees, a pear perifigi, in the spot where one had once stood. When I began researching local varieties, I went through literature—around 2010, I spent time in the library in Gorizia, where there were still many books from the Austro-Hungarian period. Later, I obtained materials from Vienna. I realized that everything the farmers had told me wasn’t just oral tradition but it was also all written down, and that experts had studied this topic too.

During the Austro-Hungarian period, this region—Goriška and Brda—was important for supplying fruit known as “southern fruit,” sold in Vienna and Klagenfurt. After the First World War, when the area became part of Italy, the state neglected its importance, since it already had rich fruit production elsewhere and didn’t invest in maintaining these spaces. After the Second World War, agrarian reforms focused on increasing yields on smaller plots, limiting varieties. At one point, a single region might have had over thirty types of pears in the markets, but later, for mass production and trade, they were intentionally limited to only three. The idea was that the buyer either way doesn’t know the fruit and he just wants a familiar apple that looks like a standard apple, a pear like a pear, and so on. Apples had to be uniform—big and red.

In mass production and distribution, you can’t sell fresh fruit because it spoils quickly. Since then, global fruit trade has been reduced to a few varieties known worldwide—fruits resilient for transport, grown on low trees using large amounts of pesticides, herbicides, and other chemicals.

When I understood this, I saw the orchard as a cultural project, not just an agricultural one. We applied for funding from the Swiss Fund for Slovenia, and with the money, we published two magazines and started the orchard. In 2014, the book Fruit of the Sun (Sadje sonca) was published, collecting testimonies of people telling me stories about local varieties. It seemed important to have as many of these varieties in the orchard as possible—to preserve them. With my father’s help, we expanded the orchard, since I didn’t live here myself. In 2018, we extended it further when my father bought the neighboring abandoned vineyard. I planted two trees of the best varieties that seemed special to me. Today, the orchard keeps its 2018 form. We take care to keep the trees alive—if one dies, we plant a new one. We don’t expand it anymore, as it’s already big, and I keep encountering the same old varieties. The reason is simple: the generation with the most knowledge and stories is mostly gone. These were people aged eighty to a hundred, who could name the fruits and knew their stories. That was extremely important to me. Some trees were so old that they no longer bore fruit, though they were alive. I grafted them and only then realized what fruits they had. People would tell me, “This is a yellow one from Oborče,” but I didn’t know what this pear really was. This year, I saw it for the first time—a special, almost wild variety, a hybrid. The tree is huge, grows semi-wild, and the pears were used for must and fruit wine. There were many such trees here, as even in the Austro-Hungarian period, agronomists and priests advised people which varieties to plant for sale—viljamovka (en. Williams), napoleonka (en. Napoleon), etc. Before, people planted from seeds, and you never knew what would grow: usually something more wild, hardy, less selected, but with its own uniqueness. Centuries of crossbreeding created today’s varieties. These processes are very long: in Japan, seedless grapes were only discovered in the 1970s, developed in the 1980s, and reached the market around 2000. Even today, pears like Conference or Decana from France are varieties from 150 years ago. New varieties establish very slowly, needing testing in different environments.

That’s why local varieties are so precious to me. These are living trees, grafted and planted from generation to generation, because people knew they thrived here. In our orchard, we don’t use pesticides, so it quickly becomes clear which variety is sensitive. Many donated varieties from elsewhere failed, while our old pears, like the yellow from Oborče or fermentinka, still produce abundantly—some fruits are defective, but most are excellent. This was how it used to work: practices tested on this land.

I also have a few varieties recommended in the Austro-Hungarian period for this region because they were more “select.” But most I found in Goriška, the Vipava Valley, Brda, and Benečija. Mostly in Brda and Benečija—Brda because fruit was essential for life there, Benečija because people were more isolated and preserved old varieties. In Goriška, many were cut down, but some can still be found. The Soča Valley had a different climate—I got more apple and pear trees there than I could even graft. Similarly in Benečija, where there were many old apple trees, for example in Salamanti, with tolminke and other varieties. But I focused mainly on Brda—there were most pears, cherries, figs, some apricots. Fewer apple trees, mostly for personal use, usually sevka and some winter-hardy varieties.

Dora: Do you think that, while you were establishing the orchard, people’s perception in the region changed—both of those living here and those involved in fruit production?

Gregor: When we published the first book, it caused a real boom. All the newspapers on the Slovenian side wrote about it. Five hundred people came to the book presentation, a huge number. There were many interviews, people called me, and certain issues came to the fore.

The first problem was that the orchard is not a tree nursery. This is not a place where employees, like in an agricultural or forestry institution, care for propagating seedlings. It’s a place where trees can survive and anyone can take a cutting. Most people wanted to buy seedlings, trees—but that’s not my job.

The second problem was the market. If I wanted to become a producer for sale, most of these varieties would be unsuitable. It would require a complete system change: someone to buy the fruit who truly values it. Compared to supermarket fruit, this fruit is different—smaller, irregular. That would mean changing the concept. There’s some movement now, mainly among buyers on the Italian side and in Ljubljana, less so on our side in Primorska region. Here, if people see a wormy cherry, they still say, “Oh, it has a worm, adijo!” They don’t understand that a wormless fruit means someone killed the worms.

So a whole bunch of questions surrounding the market and institutions arose. I decided not to solve that—it’s not my profession. I told people: if you’re interested, plant a wild rootstock and come take a scion. If you want a seedling like that from a shop, you won’t get it from me.
Of course, some people remained genuinely interested. We organized actions: I connected with a fruit nursery in Italy that propagated some varieties, and we distributed them. We also arranged with the Bilje fruit nursery to try including two pears in their program. But these are long processes—official verification of varieties takes about seven years. Maybe now they will start offering perifigi and fermentinka.
Everything goes slowly, while generations with a living connection to these trees are sadly disappearing. And schools don’t teach this at all. That’s why I see the orchard’s potential elsewhere: this is not a space for production but for cultivation, for cultural education. Today it’s hard to find a space not meant solely for production. But in the past, trees weren’t only important for yield—they were part of “landscape architecture”. These trees were beautiful and large; they gave shade, blossomed in spring, and later bore fruit. A fruit tree was not an industrial plant—it was connected to the surrounding environment. Of course, fruit trees can be planted for decorative purposes—look at the Japanese, who mainly use kaki decoratively. Or figs, olives, and cherries. Again, the Japanese plant cherry varieties with beautiful blossoms that bloom only for a week, and they value them highly. They even have an entire sakura culture built around them.

After COVID, I realized it made no sense to focus on the agricultural side of the project. I had previously made distillate, jams, dried fruit—to sell something to people. But I realized that many children don’t even know what a cherry tree looks like. So the orchard took on a new function.
I think people in the area are happy to see visitors in the orchard, even though I don’t know if they understand how important the orchard is for the identity and promotion of the place. In Brda, orchards on the Slovenian side – unlike the Italian side, where orchards were destroyed in the 1970s and 80s for vine monoculture – survived until the 2000s. The reason was cooperatives: a strong cooperative bought grapes; private owners were fewer, so people sold grapes to the cooperative and kept fruit for home use. When wine became the main source of wealth, most fruit growers shifted to vineyards, and orchards were forgotten. Now it’s hard to find someone selling češpe (en. plums). When I was a child, nobody cared—they fell to the ground and nobody knew what to do. They were used to make distillate. Now, if you want them for jam, you pay a lot, and it’s hard to find someone who sells them, because everyone keeps them for themselves. There’s no longer abundance, because there are fewer trees. Each year, there are fewer producers and almost no new ones. Even if you plant, you have to wait a long time. Part of the orchard planted in 2018 only started bearing this year—just a few kilograms. To have a harvest for sale, you’d have to wait at least fifteen years, maybe a whole generation.
This environment today is very complex. Fruit growing used to be a key part of identity in these areas, of rural life in the best sense. Yet it was neglected, even by institutions. Fruit has no market value in comparison to wine. Wine simply pushed fruit growing aside.

Dora: How does this part of your life connect with your professional work as a film director? Where is the compromise between the beauty and pleasure you find in the orchard and the responsibilities and expectations of a professional career?

Gregor: Before COVID, I didn’t mix the two at all. I liked that my fruit work had no connection to film. I couldn’t imagine how to transfer such a natural thing to film. It seemed enough to have a book and the orchard—the film wasn’t necessary. Everyone told me to make a documentary, but I felt the book already captured the essence.

Then, after Stories from the Chestnut Woods (Zgodbe iz kostanjevih gozdov, 2019), we were out of money, and we applied for a short documentary. That became Common Pear (Navadna hruška, 2025). In the meantime, COVID hit, and there were also wildfires in the Karst Plateau. Marina Gumzi and I started thinking about something more experimental, hybrid—and so the future crept into the film. It was an attempt to show that the orchard is not just documentation but something broader.

Through this process, I clarified what I could actually do with this topic in film. Now we are preparing a feature-length film, which won’t be a documentary. I find it interesting to start from the perspective of someone who knows nothing. Most people today live in cities and have no connection to all of this. It’s hard to explain it because it seems abstract to them. But to me, it’s not abstract. Fundamentally, what I researched was folklore – of the people. Not only of the people—it was also very natural. Once you start working with fruit, nature draws you in, and it’s very hard to step out.

That’s why I think people will only later realize how valuable these environments are—maybe too late, when they become wild, uncultivated, less pleasant. There’s a big difference between a forest and a garden. A garden and orchard are co-shaped with humans; a forest is wilderness. It’s no coincidence that people always tried to make parts of forests more familiar.
I was surprised to realize that fruit is not just an economic matter, as people often think. It actually creates cultural values: imagination and observation. Fruit cultivates people, just as people cultivate fruit—in ways they don’t even realize. Far from being profit-driven. It’s connected to knowledge absorbed naturally, casually, without realizing how much you take in.
In Belgium, there’s an organization, Boomgaardenstichting, a state company that buys orchards with old, important trees from farmers who can no longer manage them. The goal is to preserve the trees because they are important to the landscape. That was a revelation for me because I saw the exact same thing here: old pears and large and beautiful cherries are always harder to find. There are hardly any left. These trees should become monuments—they have the same value as churches because they shape the landscape of these areas. If you preserve a church but cut down all the trees, you lose part of the landscape; the forest grows back, but the landscape and its story are lost.

Trees tell a story about the culture and traditions of a people, and about how they have endured in this place. Just as chestnuts are important for Benečija, moštarce (en. must pears) are important for Benečija, and cherries for Brda – yet, sadly, this connection is no longer recognised.

Dora: What is your favorite fruit in the orchard? Which fruit do you look forward to tasting every year?

Gregor: When you have so many varieties, it’s hard to choose one without doing injustice to the others. But I know which is my favorite in each season. People once knew well that fruit was meant primarily for processing. It wasn’t intended to be eaten fresh. Take pituralka pears, for example — they really aren’t good raw, but people used to cook them, bake them, or preserve them.

I’ll never forget being with Mr. Bruno, who told me a lot about fruit. It was late November, and he offered me pituralke, prepared traditionally: cooked in half water, half wine. When softened, he took them out, added a spoon of sugar and cloves to the liquid, boiled until thickened, then returned the pears to the syrup. They basically caramelized in wine, spices, and their own juice. You eat it warm—it melt in your mouth, really delicious. But if you try the same pears straight from the cellar, you can’t bite through them—they’re too hard. Pituralka is fruit for processing. In Benečija, it was called farca, and Italians called them pettorali.

Then there’s the vahtenca pear, typical of the Soča Valley. It got its name because it was picked around the first of November, for All Saints’ Day, vahti. The vahtenca is yellowish and, unlike the pituralka, becomes good to eat over time — around February. A similar variety is the trdoleska apple, probably the toughest apple there is, very much like the one known in Emilia-Romagna as durello mantovano or rosa in pietra. When you pick it, it’s green and as hard as a stone; even birds won’t touch it. But if you keep it in a damp cellar, by January or February it turns yellow, soft, and incredibly aromatic — the taste is almost too strong, but truly special.
Those are winter varieties. If I think about summer fruit, it’s definitely apricots. Flokar is excellent, but there’s another one that’s even better — bela pašta. It’s a beautiful variety, pale and very delicate. It was never sold commercially, because if you just touch it, the marks of your fingers remain on it. It’s light and fragile, with the taste and scent of roses.

And then there are cherries. I like them because they’re the first of the season, though they’re not as aromatic as other fruits. I really value summer pears, like perifigi, and even more so fermentinka. If you pick it just before it’s ripe and let it finish ripening at home for a few days, it turns golden yellow, with a honey-like flavour. Truly excellent.

One fruit that isn’t native here but has captivated me is an old Italian plum variety that became popular in France — regina Claudia, or reine-Claude in French. A greenish plum, a temperamental tree — one year it bears plenty, the next much less. But if you taste it at just the right moment, it’s one of the best fruits there is, in my opinion. The best ones are those growing on the sunny side and still a bit firm — the flavour is extraordinary. But on the same tree, maybe only a third of the fruits are like that; the rest are sweet but lack that special aroma. That’s how it is with big trees — not all fruits are equally good. You have to learn which ones are for eating fresh and which for making jam. With just one tree, you can have more than enough work.
These are certainly the fruits I love the most.