The winner of the Queer Palm and the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize, Saim Sadiq’s Joyland, added one more award to its tally at the closing ceremony of the Zagreb Film Festival, which took place in the Croatian capital on Saturday 29 October. The jury, consisting of Croatian-Danish actor Zlatko Burić, Belgian producer Annabella Nezri and Nicoletta Romeo (the director of the Trieste Film Festival), praised the film and the director behind it for “its lucid and anti-rhetorical view of his country, of a family microcosm through which he explores a patriarchal society with its many limits, especially for women and for the LGBTQIA+ community, where every family member is fully developed and characterised; also for his visual style and the strong potential to reach a wide audience”.

Juraj Lerotić’s Croatian-Slovenian co-production Safe Place [+leggi anche:
recensione
trailer
intervista: Juraj Lerotić
scheda film] was awarded a Special Mention. The jury praised the film “for its precise framing and minimalistic film language; about a complex and painful family situation, it is shot with tenderness, subtleness and sensitivity, and with remarkable performances by the actors”.

Awards were also given out in two competitive categories for short films. In the International Shorts category, the jury, consisting of filmmaker Marija Apčevska, producer and Locarno selector Stefan Ivančić, and filmmaker Karlo Vorih, gave the main Golden Pram Award to Matjaž Ivanišin’s That’s How the Summer Ended and the Special Mention to Daniel Soares’ What Remains. The same jury also decided on the winners of the national shorts competition, titled Checkers. The Golden Pram went to It’s Not Cold for Mosquitoes, directed by Josip Lukić and Klara Šovagović, while Rino Barbir’s Zof was awarded the Special Mention.

This year’s festival mostly took place physically, but some of the programmes, such as Plus (aimed at teenage audiences) and KinoKino (for younger children), were moved online owing to a lack of screening venues in the city. In fact, KinoKino got a separate time slot earlier this autumn. There were also some changes to the side programmes, like Together Again, which had only three titles this year, so no Golden Bicycles (for filmmakers returning to the festival) or Audience Awards were given out this time around. However, one more gong was introduced within the festival’s industry section, since the trailer editing workshop by Tomislav Pavlic and Vladimir Gojun also gave out an award.

Here is the complete list of award winners:

Main Competition

Golden Pram
Joyland – Saim Sadiq (Pakistan)
Special Mention
Safe Place [+leggi anche:
recensione
trailer
intervista: Juraj Lerotić
scheda film] – Juraj Lerotić (Croatia/Slovenia)

International Shorts Competition

Golden Pram
That’s How the Summer Ended – Matjaž Ivanišin (Slovenia/Hungary/Italy)
Special Mention
What Remains – Daniel Soares (Portugal)

Checkers

Golden Pram
It’s Not Cold for Mosquitoes – Josip Lukić, Klara Šovagović (Croatia)
Special Mention
Zof – Rino Barbir (Croatia)

Industry Youth!

Best Pitch
Wounded Tribe – Novak Šipetić, Katarina Bugarin (Serbia)

Trailer Editing Workshop

1^st Place
Lucija Strugar (Croatia)

2^nd Place
Urša Vlahušić (Croatia)