Biography

Matija Barl (17 February 1940 – 3 August 2018) was a Slovenian actor, producer and translator. In 1962 he founded and organized the first, oldest and most important Slovenian music festival called Slovenska popevka. Barl was born in Ljubljana and lived around where he loved to play. When he was 11 years he went to the audition for the movie Kekec where he was chosen out of more than a thousand kids. He got the role of main character Kekec, a strong and fearless child superhero, for which he is best known today. Everyone identified him with this role so strongly that all the kids in real life wanted to fight with him. So he had to take classes for martial arts such as wrestling and judo.Later he attended the Academy for Theatre, Radio, Film and Television in Ljubljana where he studied dramaturgy. In 1962 he moved to Germany where he worked as independent producer, translator and occasional actor. He lived in Marezige, Slovenia.