24/03/2009

The European Documentary Network (EDN) has decided to give its annual award to Croatian director Nenad Puhovski for his work over the last five years in the creation and development of ZagrebDox. The award was presented last Friday, March 20, in Greece, during the 11th Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival – Images from the 21st Century.

ZagrebDox consists of a weeklong festival and a financing forum entitled ZagrebDox Pro. In its five-year existence, ZagrebDox has garnered over 21,000 audience members and spawned a strong financing forum. At the forum, new documentary projects from the region are pitched to a panel of international financiers.

According to EDN Director Line Sandsmark, "What Puhovski has accomplished within the five years of ZagrebDox is quite amazing and a point of inspiration for all of us working with documentaries. Not only has he brought international film to Zagreb, he has also managed to bring documentaries from the region to an international audience through the ZagrebDox Pro financing forum. Taking into consideration that all this has been accomplished in a region which has been through struggles and internal battles, makes the achievements by Nenad Puhovski and ZagrebDox all the more admirable.”

Previous EDN award-winners include YLE Broadcasting (2005), the Jan Vrijman Fund (2006), Svetlana and Zoran Popovic from the Magnificent 7 Documentary Film Festival (2007) and the Institute of Documentary Film (2008).