Friday: To Doc or Not to Doc?

On Friday, ZagrebDox is preparing a special event: a caravan of bicycles as an introduction into Fredrik Gertten’s film Bikes Vs. Cars. In association with the Cyclists Union, the caravan, including 20 advocates of two-wheel transportation, together with the director, will ride through the city centre, just like what the director organised already in Brooklyn and Toronto, directly referring to the film’s subject – contemporary transportation issues. The caravan will begin in the rush hour.

Bikes Vs. Cars is scheduled for 6pm, theatre 4, followed by a Q&A session with the filmmaker and Tomislav Nakić-Alfirović from the Cyclists Union, moderated by Mima Simić.

Two Croatian short films premiere on Friday in regional competition: Clerical Error by Tin Bačun, whose making was ‘provoked by the system’ (theatre 5, 6pm), and Roommates by Katarina Zlatec and Ante Zlatko Stolica, a film about the Croatian precariat (theatre 5, 8pm). Another premiere is that of a Facumentary Generation ’68 by Nenad Puhovski, a tribute to the revolutionary revolution (theatre 3, 7pm). A Q&A session will follow after the films.

Another three festival guests with films in regional competition will be hosted in Q&As: Metod Pevec, the director of Home, about the present state of a residential building in Ljubljana built for Bosnian construction workers (theatre 5, 8pm); Klára Trencsény, the director of The Train to Adulthood, award-winning at DOK Leipzig 2015 (theatre 5, 6pm); and Gueorgui Balabanov, the director of And the Party Goes On and On, about the glamour and misery of the post-transitional Bulgarian society (theatre 1, 9pm). After the screenings, we will also have a chance to meet the director of the controversial documentary To Be or Not to Be Ivan Hiti by Branko Lazić, and the director of the documentary film about the controversies in the famous Russian ballet company, Bolshoi Babylon, Nick Read.

An author’s night will be dedicated to this year’s president of the international jury, Bruno Gamulin, featuring his films The Head, A Number out of Light, Consecration of the Place and Euclidean Landscape. The director will attend a Q&A session after the screening (theatre 1, 7pm).

Today’s line-up also includes Teen Doxes Hair by Selina Håkansson, and The Mask You Live In by Jennifer Siebel Newsom at 5pm, theatre 1. At 6pm, theatre 2 will screen the Russian film playing with the idea of a quantum man, Strange Particles by Denis Klebleev. At 8pm, theatre 2 is screening the controversial doc Travelling Light by Conxi Fornieles, and at 10pm, there is Monty Python: The Meaning of Life by Roger Graef and James Rogan.  

At the Festival Centre, 3pm, ZagrebDox Pro hosts an interesting discussion on the future of creative documentary film, To Doc or Not to Doc, moderated by Ryan Harrington (Discovery Communications), with Claire Aguilar (Sheffield Doc/Fest), Hanka Kastelicová (HBO Europe), Catherine Le Clef (CAT&Docs), Leena Pasanen (DOK Leipzig), Hrvoje Hribar (Croatian Audiovisual Centre), Sanja Ravlić (Croatian representative at Eurimages), Maja Jelisić Cooper (Klasik TV), Hrvoje Osvadić (Croatian Producers Association), Nebojša Slijepčević (Croatian Film Directors’ Guild) and Martina Petrović (Creative Europe Desk – MEDIA Office).

At 5pm, a masterclass by director Nino Kirtadzéis scheduled. She will look back on three films from her retrospective and present visual elements from the process of making.

Photo: Fredrik Gertten sat on a bike as soon as he came to Zagreb, and our photographer Julien Duval clicked immediately.