Wednesday at ZagrebDox

Dox Wednesday features two Dox events, i.e. two world premieres; the film Sarabande by the award-winning Kosovar director Kaltrina Krasniqi follows the Kosovar guitar virtuoso Petrit Çeku and reveals what it is like to be a Kosovar in present-day Europe which mostly doesn’t recognise independent Kosovo, primarily in Spain where they were shooting the film. Sarabanda is a film about the past under occupation and the present in a new state, about the relation between East and West, as well as the position of artists in modern-day Kosovo. After the screening, scheduled for 6pm, theatre 3, the author will stick around for a Q&A session with the audience.

Another filmmaker to greet the audience will be Croatian director Damian Nenadić after the world premiere of his film Days of Madness at 7pm, theatre 2. Days of Madness is a film portraying the incredible Odyssey of two mentally diverse and unjustly rejected people learning to accept their diversity, faced with the blindness of a society which branded them as hopeless and of a health system which made them addicted.

ZagrebDox Pro training programme for professionals is hosting a case study at 5pm with Slovenian director and producer Miha Čelar, who is presenting his transmedia documentary project iISLAND, one of the first such projects in the region. Čelar will convey his three-year experience in creating this project and in direct communication with target audience for the final stage of the project – a feature documentary film.

At the festival centre at 6.30pm ZagrebDox Pro hosts a panel discussion under the title Upswing of Serbian Documentary Film: Joining Forces, Series of Favourable Circumstances, Or…? with visiting panellists from Serbia: Ognjen Glavonić, Boban Jevtić, Boris Mitić, Jovana Nikolić and Mila Turajlić. Extended Q&A sessions will also host the Bosnian and Herzegovinian directing duo Sead Kreševljaković and Emir Z. Kapetanović after their film Foes at 8pm (theatre 3); Slovenian director Matjaž Ivanišin after the screening of Playing Men at 5pm (theatre 2); and Bulgarian director Georgi Tenev after the screening of Simon Vs. Fear, a personal view on the life story of photographer Simon Varsan, who became a victim of the political regime in the eighties, before the fall of the Berlin Wall. The director connects past and present events with archive footage from the communist secret services.

The screenings take place throughout the day, 11am thru 10pm. At 3pm (theatre 1) the film City of the Sun by Georgian director Rati Oneli is scheduled, a portrayal of lives, dreams and destinies of extraordinary people amidst the ruins of a half-abandoned mining town in West Georgia, once a large exploiter of manganite. The director depicts a fascinating view of the environment whose dreary industrial ruins at the same time appear colossal and like a film set. The same slot at theatre 2 is showing the film The Jungle Knows You Better than You Do by Colombian director Juanita Onzaga. With her brother she roams the mystical landscapes of Colombia searching for the soul of her murdered father. Trying to unmask family secrets, they start to follow a mystical connection between life and death.

The programme continues with The Eternals by Belgian director Pierre-Yves Vandeweerd, about roaming ghosts, the people who have survived the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan in Nagorski Karabakh. The Teen Dox section brings two titles: All I Imagine by Portuguese director Leonor Noivo, about the last school adolescent summer of a group of friends living in the Lisbon neighbourhood of Alcoitão. In a carefree atmosphere we follow André, a young rapper, who equally improvises in life and in music. The other title is Miranda – The Making of a Politician by Swedish director Mats Agren, who is staying at a Q&A session after the film to discuss his portrayal of the 14-year-old Miranda on the right track to become a young star politician in a Swedish right-wing populist party.

As far as international competition is concerned, the film Human Flow at 9pm, theatre 1, is the one to watch – the award-winning film by the renowned director, the most famous Chinese conceptual artist and political activist Ai Weiwei, a visually impressive documentary filmed at 40 refugee camps in 23 countries which exceptionally and compassionately depicts the immense scope of the global refugee crisis.