From the Thematic Focus to the Celebrations of Great Jubilees

Veton Nurkollari, the artistic director of DokuFest, the biggest cultural event in Kosovo and one of the most important documentary and short film festivals in Southeast Europe, curated a programme of six documentary titles under the name My Focus .

“Seemingly diverse films in this small selection – four feature and two short documentaries nevertheless share something in common: the concept of survival. Whether it is about the mere survival of the main protagonists in the whirlwind of war, as in the bloody Eastern Frontby Vitaly Manski and Yevhen Titarenko, or about the survival and resilience of a female gang, as in the imaginary post-Bolsonaro Brazil in the exciting and genre-undefined Dry Ground Burning by Joana Pimenta and Adirley Queriós, or about the lack of luck to survive, as in Anhell69 by Theo Montoya and The Fire Within: A Requiem for Katia and Maurice Krafft by Werner Herzog. If you’re looking for a magnificent film about survival, this time of animals, not people, there’s the Oscar-nominated Haulout by Maxim Arbugaev and Yevgenia Arbugaeva. And finally, immerse yourself in the stories of the survivors of the war in Mostar, in the letters that travel from one end of the world to the other, in the discreetly enchanting Deserters by Damir Markovina. These six films were selected from the extensive and wonderful program of this year’s ZagrebDox, where more wonderful films about survival await you.” Veton Nurkollari.

Two events at 19th ZagrebDox will mark two jubilees. In 2023, the Croatian Audiovisual Centre will celebrate 15 years since its establishment and will celebrate the successes of Croatian film and Croatian audiovisual activities and creativity with a year-long program in cooperation with the most important Croatian festivals, including ZagrebDox. One of the more important goals is to remind the domestic audience of the Croatian films they loved, which were co-financed by the Croatian Audiovisual Centre over the past 15 years. As part of the program H-15: Fifteen Years of Croatian Cinema, we will recall some of the audience’s favourite award winners from previous ZagrebDoxes: People from the Milky Way by Miroslav Mikuljan; The Destiny of Number 13 by Irena Škorić; Family Meals by Dana Budisavljević; Gangster of Love by Nebojša Slijepčević; Dear Lastanby Irena Škorić; I Like That Super Most Best by Eva Kraljević; Neighbours by Tomislav Žaja; Nun of Your Business by Ivana Marinić Kragić; Love around the World by Anđela and Davor Rostuhar and Bigger than Trauma by Vedrana Pribačić and Mirta Puhlovski.

Seventy years of Zagreb Film will also be celebrated at ZagrebDox. In its 70-year history, Zagreb Film has produced more than 1400 documentaries. In the first decades of its existence, one of the specialties of Zagreb Film was science fiction films about nature, which reached the level of the most brilliant international films of the time. On the occasion of the 70th birthday for the first time as part of the programme section named Documenting the Wilderness we present restored copies of four short documentaries about animals. Three films (Fox, Submarina and St. James’s Shell) were directed by the master of the genre, Branko Marjanović. The fourth film is one of the best Croatian commissioned films, a humorous miniature by Zvonimir Berković in which the narrator is a rooster. After the screening of Ballad of a Rooster, a Q&A with biology doctor Dušan Jelić and videographer Sandi Novak willfollow, about how to film wild animals in their habitat without endangering them.