Focus on contemporary Croatian experimental cinema

Breaking storytelling conventions and/or generic boundaries is sometimes the best way to express an idea or an emotion. As a strategy, this transgression is familiar to many contemporary Croatian filmmakers who, backed up with the decades long tradition of avant-garde arts, take the best of animation, documentary and experimental genre(s) to deconstruct the classic cinematic forms, as well as to offer a fresh look at forces that shape our everyday life.

The films presented in these two programs offer genre-bending hibrids, structural puzzles and sophisticated concepts that – although sometimes very serious – never loose their sense of humour. The audience-friendly approach to high brow topics is one of the reasons why these titles stand among the most accomplished ones in recent Croatian cinema, both in the avant-garde field and beyond.

 ANIMATION HYBRIDS 

Croatian animation has a long history of (and is world famous for) the avant-garde tendencies in the 1950s and 1960s. The films selected in the Animation Hybrids section use collage, one-legged puppets, reduced animation, intimate recollections, or even the artist's own body to tackle the topics of communication, imagination, memory, pop-culture and sexuality, stuffing the cracks in their generic mould with humour and wit.

Dream Myself Away, dir. Josip Žuvan
Father, dir. Ivan Bogdanov, Asparuh Petrov, Dmitry Yagodin, Rositsa Raleva, Moritz Mayerhofer, Veljko Popović
The Room, dir. Ivana Jurić
I Already Know what I Hear, dir. Darko Masnec
Daniil Ivanovič, You Are Free, dir. Petra Zlonoga
Football, dir. Ana Hušman
Amnesiac on the Beach, dir. Dalibor Barić

 TRANSFORMING THE EVERYDAY 

It is well known that experimetnal film often generates the content through the questioning of its own structure and strategies. However, the films selected for the Transforming the Everyday section reach out in the 'real world' to fuel their self-referential games. Dilapidated city facades, empty urban spaces, colourful lifestyle magazines, TV commercials leftovers and a strange Croatian language textbooks for foreigners – they all function as a starting point for exploring the norms and conventions that structure these films, as well as the society in general.

Site Selection, dir. Mare Šuljak
Archeo 29, dir. Vladislav Knežević
From To, dir. Miranda Herceg
The Tiniest, dir. Tomislav Šoban
In Utero, dir. Marko Škobalj, Ivan Ramljak
Postcards, dir. Ana Hušman

Other films in the programme

 International Competition 

Autofocus, dir. Boris Poljak

 World Showcase 

So Not You, dir. Ivan Sikavica

 World Experimental Showcase 

Binary Pitch, dir. Vladislav Knežević
Postcards, dir. Ana Hušman