The time of year that documentary films fans have been waiting for is finally here: ZagrebDox, an international documentary film festival is starting this weekend!
Festival was launched in 2005, which makes this upcoming festival its 14th edition, and the programme of the festival makes us believe it’s going to be one of the best ones. ZagrebDox is a specialized documentary film festival, presenting the best creative documentary films with an imaginary form and choice of topics that make it unique in Croatia and Europe.
Founded and organized by Nenad Puhovski, the festival gives awards in two categories: international and regional categories. The international competition presents the best auteur and creative documentary films from all over the world made and produced in the past year, with a focus on everything that is new, brave, off mainstream and intrepid. This year’s selection includes more than 20 films in the international bracket.
The regional competition program consists of the films made last year in Albania, Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Italy, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Slovenia and Serbia (an interesting definition of “region”, something that we rarely get to see). While both competitions are extremely valuable and present films worth watching, it is important to note that the regional competition often highlights films that would otherwise possibly go unnoticed, and which you can still see in Zagreb thanks to this festival. There will be over 25 films shown in this competition this year.
Outside those competitions, there are many more documentaries to see during ZagrebDox. Official program is divided into themes, so you can check the biographies, musical documentaries, happy or controversial docs, films made by recognized masters of the genre, political docs, those related to teenagers, as well as documentaries made by the students of the Zagreb’s Academy of Drama (ADU). There will be two retrospectives screened as well, Author’s Night of a Croatian author Boris Poljak and retrospective of a French prolific director Claire Simon.
ZagrebDox Pro is a four-day training programme, aimed at professionals in the field of film production, consisting of a preparatory workshop for creative documentary projects in different stages of development and production, a Pitching Forum and individual meetings. Some of the events in the ZagrebDox Pro programme are open to public, so if you’re interested in inner workings of how to make a documentary, it’s a wonderful learning opportunity.
For the first time this year, ZagrebDox also visits, so in addition to Kaptol Boutique Cinema in Zagreb some of the content will be shown in theatres in Split, Rijeka and Osijek next weekend, on March 2nd, 3rd and 4th.
So, next week is documentary-film week in Zagreb, tickets are available in Kaptol Boutique Cinema in Kaptol Centar or online on https://www.kaptolcinema.hr/, and cost around 30 kuna.
