The 22nd edition of the ZagrebDox International Documentary Film Festival, the leading Croatian documentary gathering, will take place from 19-26 April at its usual location of the Kaptol Boutique Cinema, in central Zagreb. Over the course of eight days, audiences will be able to see no fewer than 112 films across 16 programme sections. Twenty movies in the International Competition and 18 more in the Regional Competition will be in the running for the gathering's official Big Stamp Awards. The programme was presented by the festival’s artistic director, Nenad Puhovski, and executive director, Hrvoje Pukšec, at a press conference that took place on 8 April in Zagreb.

“At a time when 5 million hours of video material are published daily on various platforms, when a modest budget for a documentary film stands at around 1% of the cost of the Oscars ceremony, when newspaper editors have to choose which war they will send a crew to, and when the boundary between the artificial and the “real” is getting blurry, programming a documentary festival feels trickier than ever. That is when a simple realisation occurs: we are just pre-selectors. Our audience trusts us, but the people who form part of it can also make their own choices, recognise and evaluate the films themselves. The whole process becomes easier because, once again, we realise that we are all together in this gloomy world,” stated Puhovski.

The Regional Competition will host four world premieres: Vlad Petri’s A Train Passes Every Night and It Never Stops, Leonhard Pill’s Does the Horse Have to Work Too?, Tatjana Božić’s Fragments of Belonging and Remember My Song, co-directed by Jelena Bosanac and Tanja Brzaković. The same section will also host the international premiere of Nikola Boshnakov’s A Few Chunks of Cheese. On top of these titles, the section will also showcase pictures like Nikolaus Geyhalter’s Melt, Isa Willinger’s No Mercy, Jadran Boban’s The Feast of the Wolf and Petra Seliškar’s The Mountain Won’t Move.

On the other hand, the International Competition is composed of tried-and-tested festival titles, some of which tackle the topic of ongoing or past conflicts. Some examples are Mstyslav Chernov’s 2000 Meters to Andriivka, A Fox Under a Pink Moon by Mehrdad Oskouei, Dmytro Hreshko’s Divia and Vladlena Sandu’s Memory. Other movies, however, examine different sides of society, such as the Karlovy Vary laureate Better Go Mad in the Wild by Miro Remo, Mo Tan’s Confessions of a Mole or Marc Isaacs’ Synthetic Sincerity, to name a few.

Regarding the side sections, all of those featured last year, like Festival Hits, State of Affairs, Happy Dox, Biography Dox, Music Globe and so on, are also making a return this year. The same can be said for the format of the festival’s industry section, ZagrebDox Pro, which is back in the form that was established last year, with the Slow Pitch event serving as its centrepiece.

“Our festival is part of two major and important European and global ‘families’: the European Film Academy and Cannes Docs. Our industry programme has finally stabilised and has ‘found its true self’ after years of experimentation. I can only say to my colleagues and to all film lovers: enjoy your own ZagrebDox!” Pukšec concluded.

You can peruse the full programme here.