Author’s Night: Katarina Zrinka Matijević

A little less than a quarter of a century divides us from Katarina Zrinka Matijević’s triumphant debut at the 8th Croatian Film Days with her student documentary The Duel (1998) and the first Croatian Film Days Grand Prix ever given to a woman director. Since then, in only four, but four “rock-solid” directing-screenwriting endeavours, documentary filmmaker Matijević has journeyed from observing ordinary daily life and verité provocation of its strange or “marginal” protagonists, to essay-shaped self-observation. Each of them was characterised by a duel – existential or opposition – between a strict mother and a playful child (The Duel), between man and nature, between husband and wife (On Cows and Men, 2002), between a “republic” of marginal characters and the “official order” (Peščenopolis, 2003) – all the way to laying bare her own intimacy in a sophisticated visual homage to her Lika roots in the multi-award-winning documentary A Two Way Mirror (2016). We will take this journey once again with the director at her author’s night.

Diana Nenadić, Programme Selector