04/11/2022 - A wide and varied selection of industry events on the topics of film, video games, ecology and marketing formed this year's industry programme at Zagreb

The jubilee 20^th edition of the Zagreb Film Festival presented a rich selection of industry events, offering a mix of staple diet workshops such as My First Script, My First Video Game and the Industry Youth! pitching workshop and forum with masterclasses and panels that hosted established professionals in their fields. The focus of this year's topics was spread from strictly cinema to video-gaming, ecology, marketing and film-watching education.

My First Workshop established itself as a valuable platform for up-and-coming filmmakers from the West Balkans region and Europe over the course of previous editions of the festival, with titles like Ognjen Glavonić’s The Load [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Ognjen Glavonić
film profile] and Sonja Tarokić’s The Staffroom [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Sonja Tarokić
film profile] being developed at the workshop. This year’s team of mentors was the same as previous years, with scriptwriters and filmmakers Antonio Nuić (All for Free, Donkey [+see also:
trailer
film profile], Life Is a Trumpet [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Antonio Nuić
film profile], Mali [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Antonio Nuić
film profile]) and Pjer Žalica (Fuse [+see also:
trailer
film profile], Days and Hours, Focus, Grandma [+see also:
trailer
film profile] and May Labor Day [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile]) being the main ones, while script consultant David Pope served as the guest lecturer. Six projects from Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria and Spain were selected and developed (see the list below).

(The article continues below - Commercial information)

Two panels were organised by the Creative Europe MEDIA office in Zagreb. 'Meet Your Neighbour – Our (Non)Organic Collaborations' dealt with the results of MEDIA 2021, asking questions about how (un)successful the beneficiaries were, who were the (un)usual suspects in terms of cross-border collaboration, and whether national funds are matching the back-ups. Creative Europe Desk representatives Kamen Balkanski (Bulgaria), Una Domazetovski (Serbia) and Anna Kasimati (Greece) were the speakers, while Martina Petrović (Croatia) was the moderator. The other MEDIA event was an online training called 'Greening & Training' consisting of two presentations, 'Green Film Lab – Torino Film Lab & Green Film Lab' presented by Mercedes Fernández and 'Sustainability Management Course' presented by the International Screen Institute from Austria.

Two masterclasses took place at the festival. Croatian-Danish actor and jury member Zlatko Burić, known for his collaboration with Nicolas Winding Refn on his Pusher trilogy and recently glimpsed in Ruben Östlund’s Palme d’Or-winning film Triangle of Sadness [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Ruben Östlund
interview: Ruben Östlund
film profile] which also served as the closing film of the festival. Croatian actress Hrvojka Begović moderated the conversation, and the original Pusher (1996) was screened as a part of the masterclass. The other masterclass was given by Italian editor Cristiano Travaglioli, known for his collaboration with Paolo Sorrentino on the auteur’s every project since Il Divo [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Nicola Giuliano
interview: Paolo Sorrentino
interview: Philippe Desandre
film profile] (2008). The conversation was moderated by Croatian editors Vladimir Gojun and Tomislav Pavlic, and the event also served as the platform to announce the news that the Croatia Film Editors’ Association is founded.

Gojun and Pavlic had one more duty at the festival with a Trailer Editing Workshop for the film editing students at the Academy of Dramatic Art in Zagreb that they taught. The workshop was of the competitive kind, with the trailer editing job for the upcoming film Sirin [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], the feature debut by the Montenegrin filmmaker Senad Šahmanović, as the prize. Along Šahmanović, the Croatian co-producer of the film, Jure Pavlović, and Croatian editor and filmmaker Dubravka Turić served as the jury.

Tradition was continued with the 'My First Video Game' workshop for children between the ages of 7 and 13. Nika Tilić served as the mentor and the workshop was co-organised by HUB385. Unfortunately, the other video games-themed event, the lecture called 'Path Out: Jack Gutmann' focused on storytelling in video games as a way of dealing with trauma, was cancelled due to the illness of the key lecturer, the exiled Syrian multimedia artist Jack Gutmann.

Another tradition was continued with the Industry Youth! pitching workshop and forum for the students of the regional film academies. (See the list of participants and projects below.) Producer Čedomir Kolar, scriptwriter David Pope, one of the Zagreb Film Festival organisation founders Lana Matić and the head of the Zagreb Film Festival industry section Inja Korać were the workshop coordintators, while Kolar, Tomislav Vujnović (of Poster) and Goran Turković (of Šesnić & Turković) served as the jury members. The companies Poster and Šesnić & Turković provided the prizes for the winning projects.

Some newer traditions also continued, with the ZFF Club for Cinephiles 54+ mentored by Croatian film critic Nino Kovačić, the ZFF travels programme through which selected films from the festival are screened in different towns of Croatia and their city cinemas, and the Festivals in the Spotlight programme in which selected films from several partner festivals were screened online on the Zagreb Film Festival platforms kinoeuropa.hr and croatian.film. Also, the Albert Kapović Award was posthumously given to recently deceased producer Darija Kulenović Gudan and the exhibition '20 Years of ZFF in Posters' was organised under the roof of the Zagreb Film Festival Industry.

My First Script workshop projects and participants:

Heads in Sacks – Mario Kovač (Croatia)
Gordan’s Course in Self-Deception – Natko Jurdana (Croatia)
Nora’s Music House – Ilina Perianova (Bulgaria)
All According to the Law – Džana Pinjo (Bosnia and Herzegovina)
Viktorija – Anita Čeko (Croatia)
Wolf Grrrls! - Claudia Estrada Tarascó (Spain)

Industry Youth! pitching workshop and forum projects and participants:

Routine – Ana Šiškov (ADU Zagreb, Croatia)
The First Kiss of the Man with Exploding Spit – Emir Solaković (ASU Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina)
Wounded Tribe – Novak Šipetić (FDU Belgrade, Serbia)
Nothing Personal Daddy – Tamara Pavićević (FDU Cetinje, Montenegro)
Is This What Loneliness Looks Like? - Tina Veličković (FDU Skopje, North Macedonia)