29/08/2011

The ninth Liburnia Film Festival (August 24-27) in Ičići near Rijeka showcased the best of Croatian documentary scene. Among 12 films in competition, the best film award went to Silvestar Kolbas' War Reporter.

Kolbas is a famous cinematographer who worked as a cameraman for the Croatian National Television at the beginning of the war in 1991. His film comprises archive materials and a voiceover, in which he narrates his personal experiences rather than exploring the war itself. The film had its world premiere at the Sarajevo Film Festival in July.

A special mention went to Dean Lalić and Sanjin Stanić's Rock 'n' Roll Is to Blame?, a documentary about the Rijeka-based band Fit, which was at the peak of its popularity at the beginning of the 1990s, when Yugoslavia fell apart, which prevented Fit from becoming what could have been the biggest band of the period, and the film-makers have cleverly framed the classic rock-doc form into that period of time, intertwining it with interesting personal stories of the band's members who ended up living in different corners of the world.

Vanja Juranić Sviličić's Am I Happy Or What? won another special mention. The director gained access to a Zagreb hotel and shows us the everyday life of chambermaids and their supervisor as they go around taking care of rooms and other facilities, a world rarely seen by audiences. The film had its world premiere at the ZagrebDox Festival, where it won a special mention in the regional competition.

The tenth Liburnia Film Festival will be organized by Zagreb-based Restart, the country's largest documentary outfit which works in production, distribution and exhibition.