A look at what’s on at the 22nd Zagreb Film Festival

(Zagreb Film Festival)

At the media conference, held on Wednesday, 16 October, at Urania – Space of Creation, ZFF Director Boris T. Matić, Program Director Selma Mehadžić and Executive Director Lana Matić presented the program of the 22nd Zagreb Film Festival.

“We are excited to present to our audience another rich and diverse festival program, taking place 4 – 10 November at CineStar Branimir, Cinema Kinoteka, Museum of Contemporary Art (MSU), Dokukino KIC, Scenoteka (ex. Vidra) and online at the platform croatian.film.

Once again, the Feature Film competition will screen at CineStar Branimir, while the programs Together Again and The Great 5 yet again present films by well-known directors. We are proud to have become a qualifying festival for the European Film Award in the Short Film category.

Another great piece of news is that the program PLUS becomes a competition section, which puts a greater emphasis on authors dealing with coming-of-age stories in an inventive and daring way, who are especially interesting to a young audience.

This year, we add Scenoteka (ex Vidra theatre), in the immediate vicinity of CineStar Branimir, to our roster of well-known festival locations, because we feel it is an ideal place for socialising and getting together after film screenings”, said Boris T. Matić.

MAIN COMPETITION PROGRAM

The main competition program includes ten films, nine of which compete for the festival’s main award, the Golden Pram. The 22nd edition of the Zagreb Film Festival will open with director Bruno Anković’s feature The Celebration, the absolute winner of this year’s Pula Film Festival, and it will close with the Croatian premiere of Pedro Almodovar’s Golden Lion-winning drama The Room Next Door, starring Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore, which will screen out of competition.

Breezy and contagiously optimistic, That’s It for Today, the sophomore feature of Serbian director Marko Đorđević (My Morning Laughter, 2019), who will be arriving at the 22nd ZFF, was un unexpected box office hit in its home country! “The fairy tale about happy people” (as described in Politika), enchanted the viewers with its depiction of a different world where people listen to each other.

The warm-hearted and painfully honest comedy How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies, directed by Pat Boonnitipat, is another big box office hit across Asia and Thailand’s Academy Award contender.

Wild Diamond, French director Agatha Riedinger’s feature debut, which premiered in competition at Cannes, is the story of fame-obsessed teenager Liane (Malou Khebizi) and a offers a sharp cross-section of today’s instant star culture.

Julie Keeps Quiet is a tense character study about a young tennis player who finds herself in the midst of a scandal involving her coach. The debut of Belgian director Leonardo van Dijl, with famous tennis player Naomi Osaka as executive producer, premiered at Cannes, and was nominated for the LUX Audience Award. Actresses and professional tennis players Tessa Van den Broeck and Grace Biot will attend the film’s Zagreb screening.

The comedy drama A Real Pain is the second feature directed by famous American actor Jesse Eisenberg (The Squid and the Whale, The Social Network, Louder Than Bombs, ZFF 2016…).

A deeply personal and touching road movie steeped in sharp-witted humour about two character-incompatible cousins (Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin) who travel to Poland to fulfil their late grandmother’s wish. Happy Holidays, a lively and layered chronicle of Arab and Jewish coexistence in Haifa, by Palestinian director Scandar Copti, received the award for Best Screenplay in the Orizzonti section at the 81st Venice International Film Festival.

The Best Film in Mostra’s Orizzonti section, The New Year That Never Came, by Romanian director Bogdan Mureșanu, is set in the twilight hours of Ceaușescu’s regime, and follows several characters whose fates get entangled and turn into an explosive tragicomedy during the winter holidays.

Drowning Dry, the second film by Lithuanian director and Venice-laureate Laurynas Bareiša (Pilgrims, 2021), follows the nearly tragic consequences of a family holiday with a hefty dose of humour and warmth. With precise direction, which have earned him comparisons with Michael Haneke, Bareiša takes viewers through a puzzle of events that gradually merge into a full-view story.

The film was awarded for direction and acting at Locarno, while its Zagreb screening will be presented by actresses Agne Kaktaite and Gelmine Glemzaite.

The Feature Film jury will consist of award-winning Icelandic director Ninna Pálmadóttir (Solitude, ZFF 2023), producer Anamaria Antoci (Tangaj Production, Romania) and festival programmer and curator Sonja Baksa (TIFF Short Cuts, Vancouver Film Festival, Canada).

This year’s Short Film competition boasts an important new feature: ahead of its 22nd edition, ZFF joined the European Film Academy Short Film Network, which consists of thirty European festivals, which means that one film from the international short film competition chosen by this year’s jury will become a contender for the European Film Award nomination.

Eight films have been selected for Checkers, the national short film competition by programmer Vladimir Gojun. These are: So, Where is Nataša? By Sanja Milardović, Yoghurt, Juice, Cigarettes by Josip Lukić, Spot by Sara Alavanić, The Lambkin by Martina Marasović, Ark by Mladen Stanić, Dog of a Famous Person by Jozo Schmuch, One Day Something (Terrible) Is Going to Happen by Dalija Dozet, and At the Table by Ivan Veljača.

The international short film competition features 10 works, with almost all of the authors personally attending the festival to present their films. Two of these will have their world premieres in Zagreb. These are Belgian short Kids Will be Alright by Sigi van Roy and Greek director Kyriakos Kollias’ Tit for Tat, while Malin Ingrid Johansson’s Deck 5B, awarded Best International Short at the Toronto Festival, will have its European premiere.

The program also includes French short Alarms by Nicolas Panay, British-French Marion by Joe Weiland and Finn Constantine, with Cate Blanchett and Sienna Miller as executive producers, Spanish The Idea of an Island by Carmen Pedrero, German-Russian Hymn of the Plague by the Ataka51 collective, Italian Phantom by Gabriele Manzoni, Taiwanese The Stag by An Chu, and Norwegian Machines by Sigurd Bleken.

The Short Film Jury will be comprised of: Daniel Soares (Portugal), double ZFF laureate (Please Make It Work – Golden Cart 2023, What Remains – Special Mention 2022); David Gašo (Croatia), director of Short Cut Grass, last year’s winner Checkers, and festival programmer Yulia Serdyukova (Hamburg International Short Film Festival).

OTHER COMPETITION AND SIDE PROGRAMS

The rest of 22nd ZFF programs – PLUS, Together Again, The Great 5, Network of Festivals in the Adriatic Region, KinoKino, and the LUX Audience Award – will also showcase a series of intriguing titles.

This year, the PLUS section breaks out of the familiar framework and shows daring films by interesting authors on a par with the main program offer. These are films dealing with coming-of-age stories that communicate with different audiences, being especially interesting to young people.

PLUS presents Locarno’s Golden Leopard-winning Toxic of Lithuanian director Saulė Bliuvaitė, a look into the merciless world of modelling and catwalks from the perspective of two teenage girls; Happyend, the dystopian debut by Japanese director Neo Sora, otherwise the son of the famous composer Ryuichi Sakamoto; and Good One, the funny, down-to-earth and deeply compassionate portrait of girlhood by American filmmaker India Donaldson.

The program exists as a separate entity, but some of the films from the main competition will also compete for the Young Jury Award. This year, they are Julie Keeps Quiet, Wild Diamond and How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies from the feature film program.

The program Together Again will showcase seven films by authors whose films appeared in the main program of previous festival editions. When the Light Breaks, which opened the Un Certain Regard program in Cannes, will be presented to the ZFF audience by the well-known Icelandic director and screenwriter Rúnar Rúnarsson (Volcano, ZFF 2012; Sparrows, ZFF 2015, and Echo, ZFF 2020). Dwelling Among the Gods, a sharp critique of today’s society based on true events is the new film by Serbian director Vuk Ršumović, who is remembered for his excellent debut No One’s Child (ZFF 2014 – Audience Award).

The French Emmanuelle directed by Audrey Diwan (Happening, ZFF 2021) with Noémie Merlant and Naomi Watts, is a feminist reinterpretation of the eponymous cult classic from the 70s. Love by Norwegian director and writer Dag Johan Haugerud (Beware of Children, ZFF 2019) centres on two lovers who explore intimacy beyond the limits of what is socially acceptable, while This is Not a Love Song by Nevio Marasović (Vis-À-Vis, ZFF 2013, Goran, ZFF 2016, Good Times, Bad Times, ZFF 2023) is a romantic drama starring Janko Popović Volarić and Lana Barić.

Together Again also includes two great thrillers. Santosh, the brilliant debut feature by Sandhya Suri (I for India, ZFF 2005) screened at Cannes, Toronto and Karlovy Vary, and Observing, a psychological thriller by Slovenian filmmaker Janez Burger (On the Sunny Side of the Alps, ZFF 2007; Ivan, ZFF 2017), screening out of competition. The winner of the Golden Bicycle Award will be decided by the jury consisting of director Andrej Korovljev, editor Klara Šovagović and producer Hrvoje Osvadić.

As part of The Great 5, ZFF brings films from five major European cinemas – French, British, German, Italian, and Spanish – in collaboration with cultural institutes and embassies of these countries. The sumptuous French pop opera Emilia Pérez by Jacques Audiard (A Prophet, Rust and Bone, Dheepan) won the Cannes Jury Prize for Directing and the Best Actress Award (for Selena Gomez, Karla Sofía Gascón, Zoe Saldaña, Adriana Paz), and it’s also France’s Academy Award contender.

The latest film of Spanish director Jonás Trueba (The August Virgin, ZFF 2019), The Other Way Around, is a twisted comedy about love turned upside-down, which premiered in the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes.

Giulia Louise Steigerwalt’s Italian feature Diva Futura takes the viewers to the famous film studio that launched the careers of porn stars Ilona Staller and Moana Pozzi in the 80s. The film premiered at the Venice Mostra, and also features Croatian actress Tesa Litvan (Even Pigs Go to Heaven, The Diary of Diana B.) in one of the roles.

The German Dying is a black comedy about dying by controversial director Matthias Glasner, while the British Outrun directed by Nora Fingscheidt (System Crashers) is a drama about a former addict who finds refuge on a remote island in her native Scotland. The film was based on the bestseller of the same name by Amy Liptot, and was produced by the lead actress Saoirse Ronan. The Great 5 screens at Cinema Kinoteka and MSU.

USEFUL INFORMATION

Ticket prices range from 3 euros (KinoKino) to 5 euros (Main Program, PLUS, Together Again, Network of Festivals, The Great 5), and in presale, from 16 October to 3 November, the prices are 1 euro lower. Tickets can be purchased from 16 October until the end of the festival on the website kupiulaznicu.zff.hr. Ticket sales at locations start on 2 November at the main festival box office in CineStar Branimir, and once the festival starts also at Cinema Kinoteka (5 Nov) and MSU (5 Nov). In addition to the official festival website, the program and schedule are also available in ZFF mobile app.

Zagreb Film Festival is financially supported by the City Office for Culture, Intercity and International Cooperation and Civil Society, Croatian Audiovisual Centre, Creative Europe — MEDIA sub-program, Kultura Nova, and the City of Zagreb Tourist Board.