Which Panels and Masterclasses Will Take Place at ZagrebDox?

As part of the participatory documentary platform ZagrebDoXXL, five panels will be held. After the screening of the film Merkel, directed by Eva Weber, the panel Women in Politics will take place. Sandra Benčić, Katarina Peović, Jadranka Kosor, Vesna Škare-Ožbolt will take part in the conversation, which will address the position of women in politics, the challenges they face and the obstacles they had to overcome in order to hold leading political positions, and will be hosted by Ivana Dragičević.

On the International Transgender Visibility Day, and after the screening of the film Blue ID by Turkish directors Burcu Melekoğlu and Vuslat Karan, we will look at the position of transgender people with the aim of raising awareness of the discrimination they face every day, the importance of education and presence in society, and the acceptance of gender differences which can lead to new forms of community. Espi Tomičić, writer, playwright and representative of the kolekTIRV | For the rights of trans, intersex and gender variant persons, Iva Žegura, a clinical psychologist employed at the Vrapče Psychiatry Clinic, and Bojana Ivanišević, a lawyer with many years of experience in representing LGBT persons, hosted by Dina Pokrajac take part in a panel under the title Being Transgender in Croatia.

The environment in which we live is extremely important for mental health. However, according to numerous studies, the mental health of young people around the world is in constant decline. There are more and more disorders such as depression and anxiety, and many experts associate the influence of social networks with this. In our society, mental health is still somewhat of a taboo, and the capacities for providing psychological aid are overcrowded. Mental Health of the Young and Social Media is the name of the panel following the screening of the film Manifesto, by Angie Vinchito, and in conversation with Sena Puhovski, clinical psychologist and psychotherapist, president of the Zagreb Psychological Society, co-founder of the Psychological Centre for Children and Families Brigojedac, Judita Gamulin, a film director and co-founder of the Pukotine.hr platform, Kristijan Orešković, a project manager and programme associate of the Youth Network of Croatia, and Lovro Marušić, a 2nd year psychology student and associate of the Pukotine.hr platform, we will learn how to seek help, detect and define one’s own problems, and create spaces where young people are not alone.

After the screening of the movie Away, by Ruslan Fedotow, there will be a panel called In Solidarity with Refugees, which will be attended by representatives of organisations dealing with the integration of refugees, and will attempt to answer the question of how to create hospitable communities where refugees can rebuild their lives and with their cultures, experiences and hope for a better future contribute to building a stronger, more diverse and inclusive society. The programme is carried out in cooperation with UNHCR Croatia.

After the screening of the episode Tourism from the series Good Economy, the panel Entrepreneurship to Sustainable Life will be held. How to reconcile the tension between investments that prioritise social and environmental goals and those that prioritise financial returns? Does social entrepreneurship really make a difference, or does it just maintain a fundamentally unsustainable status quo?Can it be considered ethical if it continues to contribute to a capitalist system that perpetuates inequality and exploitation? How do we ensure that the voices and perspectives of those most affected by social and environmental issues are truly heard? The director of the series Good Economy Đuro Gavran, social entrepreneur, and innovator Teo Petričević, scientist, ecologist and activist Dražen Šimleša from the Ivo Pilar Institute of Social Sciences, and researcher and assistant professor at the Faculty of Political Sciences Davorka Vidović will try to answer these questions at the panel.

In cooperation with Restart, there will be a masterclass under the title Tracing Archives: From Official to Private Memory, by the multiple award-winning author Mila Turajlić (Cinema Komunisto, The Other Side of Everything, The Non-Aligned: Scenes from the Labudović Reels and Ciné-Guerrillas: Scenes from the Labudović Reels), with a focus on her multi-layered work with archives and the various artistic-research strategies she applies. Turajlić will talk about her long-standing fascination with archives, which she turns to because of her dissatisfaction with the deliberate erasure of the history and cultural heritage of Yugoslavia. For M. Turajlić, the reappropriation of archives becomes a gesture against oblivion and a fight for the right of her generation to write their own history, in a personal and subjective tone. The issue of commercialisation of access to and ownership of archives will also be addressed. The event will be held in Dokukino Kic, and will be hosted by Nebojša Slijepčević.

At ZagrebDox, television reporter Tihomir Ladišić will give a masterclass under the title Conflict Zone. There are a number of professional, political, moral and other dilemmas associated with any war conflict. One of them is certainly the question of neutrality and impartiality in the journalistic approach to a war conflict. To what extent is it possible to maintain this impartiality in a conflict involving the country you live in, as was the case with the war in Croatia? How important is it to know the history, religion and political situation when reporting from a country like Iraq and Afghanistan? How much is it possible to move in a war zone when you are limited as a journalist and constantly accompanied by one of the parties in the conflict? Today, in the age of new technologies and social networks, how demanding is it to verify information and video content coming from the conflict zone? What is it like to lose fellow journalists and cameramen who died while reporting from war zones? These are all topics on which Tihomir Ladišić will share his experiences at a masterclass as part of ZagrebDox Pro.

Alisa Kovalenko will give a masterclassunder the title Edges of War. The masterclass will address the war and stories behind it. What are we looking for and why? Indirect and direct stories about war, variations of risks and decisions, personal and artistic perspective, emotional engagement and distance, how to find a balance – these delicate topics will be discussed using examples of work on the films Alis in Warland (IDFA, 2015), We Will Not Fade Away (Berlinale, 2023) and Frontline, which is currently in development.