Three Croatian films to premiere at the 52nd International Film Festival in Rotterdam

Horror Vacui

Zagreb, January 26 – Three Croatian films will premiere at the prestigious International Film Festival in Rotterdam: the short experimental film Ingresso Animali Vivi by screenwriter and director Igor Grubić, the short experimental-documentary film Horror Vacui by Boris Poljak and the feature film Polako nikuda by Damir Čučić. 

The aforementioned festival will premiere the digitally restored version of the short feature film The Marriage of Mr. Marzipan Vatroslav Mimica from 1963, and will also include screenings of two minority Croatian co-productions: feature film Days of Drought by Turkish director Emin Alper, feature documentary Playing Men by Slovenian director Matjaž Ivanišina as well as the screening of one of the most successful domestic films of the past year, Jurj Lerotić’s Safe Place. 

The 52nd edition of the Rotterdam International Film Festival will take place from January 25 to February 5, 2023.

The films Ingresso Animali Vivi by screenwriter and director Igor Grubić and Horror Vacui by Boris Poljak will have their world premiere in Rotterdam as part of the Short & Mid-length program, which shows over a hundred titles from around the world that are shorter than 63 minutes. 

Ingresso Animali Vivi is set in the northeast of Italy, in the cities along the national border, where animals used to be brought from Eastern Europe for the Italian food/meat industry. Only one animal managed to enter and exit alive from those areas of death on the conveyor belt. 

Polako nikuda

The director of photography is Bojan Mrđenović, the editor is Damir Čučić, the author of the animations is Marko Meštrović, and Iva Kraljević was in charge of the sound design. The producer of the film is Igor Grubić, and the executive producers are Marijana Veljović and Sara Čučić. The film was produced by the Creative Union, and distributed by Bonobostudio.

The title of the film Horror Vacui by Boris Poljak comes from the expression of the same name coined by Aristotle, which denotes the fear of empty space and is used as a metaphor for the fear of an uncertain future that causes feelings of anxiety and loneliness. With its shot sequences and associative montage, this meditative film warns of the increasing hyper-militarization of the world we live in and explores how it affects the human psyche. 

The film is a stylistic continuation of Poljak’s previous award-winning films Splitski akvarel, Autofocus and Oni samo dolije i zaladje. The screenwriter, director and director of photography of the film is Boris Poljak, the editor is Damir Čučić, and Ruzina Frankulin is the sound designer. The producers of the film are Matko Burić and Hrvoje Selec. 

The film was created under the auspices of the Croatian Film Association. The distributor of the film is Split Screen.

Damir Čučić’s feature film Slow to Nowhere will have its world premiere in the Harbor section. It is a film in which the procedure of variant repetition is applied – the same event is told twice in a row, only the second time it is presented more elaborately. 

What they have in common are the main characters Oleg and Marta – a student of visual arts, addicted to drugs and a librarian, addicted to many things. Their portraits are made like mirrors, when Marta looks in the mirror she doesn’t see herself but Oleg and vice versa. Katarina Arbanas and Jura Ruža are in the lead roles, and Ksenija Marinković, Marina Redžepović and Bojan Perić are in supporting roles. 

The director of photography is Marinko Marinkić, the composer is Goran Štrbac, the editor is Marta Bregeš, the scenographers are Darwin Butković and Đorđe Jandrić, the costume designer is Viktor Wolf, the mask master is Sanjin Vudrag, and the sound designers are Bojan Perić, Goran Štrbac and Krešimir Šušljek. The producers of the film are Damir Čučić, Matko Burić and Hrvoje Selec. The film is produced by the Croatian Film Association.

Ingresso Animali Vivi

In the same section (Harbour), the Dutch audience will be presented for the first time the multiple award-winning debut of Jurj Lerotić, A Safe Place, which was also a Croatian candidate for the Oscar award. The film is produced by Pipser, and the producer is Miljenka Čogelja. A safe place is still in regular cinema distribution in Croatia.

As part of the Cinema Regained program – a program dedicated to restored classics and films about film culture – the digital restoration of Vatroslav Mimica’s short feature satire The Marriage of Mr. Marzipan (Zora film, 1963) will have its premiere. 

The Croatian Cinematheque of the Croatian State Archives has digitally restored this film with the support of the Croatian Audiovisual Center, and the restoration was carried out in the Zagreb studios Ater and Klik film. The feature-length documentary Playing Men by Slovenian director Matjaž Ivanišin and Croatian co-producers Vanja Jambrović and Tibor Keser from Restart will be shown in the same program.

In the Limelight section, the feature film Days of Drought by Turkish director Emin Alper, which is also co-produced with Croatia (Anita Juka, 4Film), is shown.

International Film Festival in Rotterdam (International Film Festival Rotterdam – IFFR) is one of the largest and most influential film festivals, which, in addition to attracting tens of thousands of professionals and visitors every year, determines future film trends and reveals filmmakers to watch out for. 

The director of the festival since 2020 is Vanja Kaluđerčić from Poland, and since this year one of the selectors of the short film program is Croatian director, critic and curator Ivan Ramljak.

This year, the 52nd festival offers visitors over 400 titles and a multitude of exhibitions, multimedia installations, audiovisual experiments, performances and the like. One of the biggest attractions of the accompanying program is definitely Steve McQueen’s latest work of art – the Sunshine State exhibition.