The 22nd Zagreb Film Festival will take place from 4-10 November at five different locations across the Croatian capital, as well as on the croatian.film platform. The complete line-up for the forthcoming edition was presented at a press conference that took place on Wednesday 16 October, held by the trio of festival heads, festival director Boris T Matić, programme director Selma Mehadžić and executive director Lana Matić.

The main programme features nine titles, of which eight are eligible competitors for the Golden Pram Award. Bruno Anković’s Celebration [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Bruno Anković
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intervista: Agathe Riedinger
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intervista: Leonardo van Dijl
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intervista: Scandar Copti
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intervista: Bogdan Mureşanu
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intervista: Laurynas Bareiša
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The big news comes from the festival’s shorts section, since from this year, the Zagreb Film Festival has joined the European Film Academy Short Film Network, which has made it one of the circa 30 festivals around Europe to serve as European Film Award-qualifying events. This year’s international competition counts ten titles, while the national one, Checkers, sports eight. They will all be judged by the same jury, consisting of the directors of last year’s winning films, Daniel Soares and David Gašo, as well as selector Yulia Serdyukova.

The status of the PLUS selection, dedicated to films for youth audiences, has also changed this year. It remains a separate competition that will be judged by the youth jury, but selected films from the main programme – those that deal with coming-of-age themes and the challenges of youngsters’ lives – are also eligible for the award. This section will feature this year’s winner of Locarno, Toxic [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Directors Talks @ European…
intervista: Saulė Bliuvaitė
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Seven filmmakers whose work is already known to Zagreb Film Festival audiences from previous editions of the gathering are coming back to take part in the Together Again selection. Films like When the Light Breaks [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Elín Hall
intervista: Rúnar Rúnarsson
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intervista: Vuk Ršumović e Fereshteh H…
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intervista: Audrey Diwan
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intervista: Janez Burger
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The Big Five section brings films from the five biggest national film industries in Europe – France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK – in co-operation with the embassies and the cultural institutions of those countries. Movies by Jacques Audiard (Emilia Perez [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Jonás Trueba
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intervista: Matthias Glasner
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intervista: Nora Fingscheidt
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Five films (one classic, Vatroslav Mimica’s An Event from 1969, and four contemporary works, Gints Zilbalodis’ Flow [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Gints Zilbalodis
intervista: Red Carpet @ European Film…
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intervista: Stefanie Kolk
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intervista: Asta Kamma August
intervista: Ernst De Geer
scheda film] and Peter Hoogendoorn’s Three Days of Fish [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Peter Hoogendoorn
scheda film]) will be shown in the Network of Festivals in the Adriatic Region competitive section. The Zagreb Film Festival has also maintained the KinoKino section, dedicated to children’s audiences, and Festivals in the Spotlight, which showcases short films from the gatherings that the festival has co-operation agreements with.

The industry section includes the firmly established My First Script workshop, where scriptwriters and filmmakers Antonio Nuić and Pjer Žalica, with the help of their Czech colleague Pavel Marek, will work with the writers of the six selected feature-debut projects. There will also be master classes by filmmaker Rúnar Rúnarsson and editor Marco Costa, the Industry Youth! pitching forum for projects by the students of five regional academies, the Trailer Editing Workshop, the My First Video Game workshop for children and the ZFF Film Club for Cinephiles 54+, a film criticism workshop for mature cinemagoers. On top of those events, already well known from previous years, there will be plenty of panel talks, round-tables and a casting workshop called Audition as Networking, led by actress Katarina Madirazza with additional insights provided by producers Tamara Babun and Matija Drniković, director Filip Heraković and casting director Sanja Drakulić.

The complete programme is available to peruse here.