02/11/2023 - This year's edition of the Croatian gathering offers a rich and varied line-up, incorporating various side competitions alongside the main one where contenders will vie for the Golden Pram

The Zagreb Film Festival, which will take place from 6-12 November in several locations around the Croatian capital, as well as on two web platforms, kinoeuropa.hr and croatian.film, has announced its full programme during a press conference. Festival director Boris T Matić expressed how proud he was about the rich and diverse film programme, pointing out that the movies shown at the festival will be the same ones that are sure to stand out in the current film season – and Zagreb audiences will be among the first crowds to see them.

The main competition, consisting of first and second features, will screen 11 titles this year, eight of which will actually be competing for the Golden Pram Award. These are, among others, the opening film, Seventh Heaven [+see also:
film review
film profile] by Jasna Nanut, Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren’s LUX Audience Award contender 20,000 Species of Bees [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Estíbaliz Urresola
film profile], Una Gunjak’s Locarno title Excursion [+see also:
film review
interview: Una Gunjak
film profile], Molly Manning Walker’s How to Have Sex [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Molly Manning Walker
film profile], Vladimir Perišić’s Lost Country [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Vladimir Perišić
film profile] and Solitude [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Ninna Pálmadóttir
film profile], directed by Ninna Pálmadóttir. The award-winning films Guardians of the Formula [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Dragan Bjelogrlić
film profile] by Dragan Bjelogrlić and Housekeeping for Beginners [+see also:
film review
interview: Goran Stolevski, Alina Serban
film profile] by Goran Stolevski will be shown out of competition, alongside the classic short My Flat (1962) by Zvonimir Berković.

Two short-film competitions see the involvement of 18 titles, ten of them in the international and eight in the national competition, called Checkers. In the Together Again competition, dedicated to auteurs who have already showcased their earlier works at the Zagreb Film Festival, seven movies will compete for the Golden Bicycle Award. The highlights of this competition are Radu Jude’s Locarno title Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Radu Jude
film profile] and Sofia Coppola’s Venice-premiered Priscilla [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], while other competing pictures include Milad Alami’s Opponent [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Milad Alami
film profile], Ilker Çatak’s The Teachers’ Lounge [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: İlker Çatak
interview: Leonie Benesch
film profile] (another LUX Audience Award nominee) and Nevio Marasović’s Good Times, Bad Times [+see also:
film review
film profile], among others. Another competition, organised by the Network of Festivals in the Adriatic Region, will screen five titles, such as Martin Skovbjerg’s Copenhagen Does Not Exist [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Martin Skovbjerg
film profile], Ena Sendijarević’s Sweet Dreams [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Ena Sendijarević
film profile] and a restored classic, Life of a Shock Force Worker (1972) by Bahrudin Bato Čengić.

The Great 5 is a programme dedicated to the five largest and most significant national film industries in Europe, realised in co-operation with cultural centres in Italy, France, Spain, the UK and Germany. This year, as an exception, it will boast six titles, since Pedro Almodóvar’s short Strange Way of Life will also be screened. Two more sidebars, Plus and KinoKino, the latter of which has become a year-long film festival, will also show films for youth and children’s audiences, respectively, while Anna Hints’ LUX Audience Award-nominated documentary Smoke Sauna Sisterhood [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Anna Hints
film profile] will also have its own special screening.

The industry section of the festival will also be rich and varied. In the traditional My First Script workshop, six participants from Montenegro, Albania, Serbia, North Macedonia and Croatia will work on their scripts with the two regular mentors, Pjer Žalica and Antonio Nuić, and one guest mentor, Slovenian-Czech filmmaker Olmo Omerzu. The My First Video Game workshop for children is also one of the staple events within Zagreb Film Festival Industry, along with the Industry Youth! pitching forum for students from the six film academies in the Western Balkans region and the 54+ film criticism workshop for senior cinephiles, mentored by Nino Kovačić. The trailer-editing workshop will be held by Vladimir Gojun and Tomislav Pavlic for the second time while, in co-operation with the Talents and Short Film Market (TSFM), the Croatian Audiovisual Centre and the North Macedonia Film Agency, the festival presents TSFM: What’s the Story Croatia script-development workshop for short films, which will culminate in a pitching forum. Olmo Omerzu, editor Bettina Böhler and producer Renée Hansen Mlodyszewski will dispense master classes, while Creative Europe – MEDIA Desk Croatia has also prepared two programmes: MEDIA Info Day and Support for Creative Innovation Lab.

The whole film and industry programme is available to peruse here.