ZagrebDox’s director Nenad Puhovski reflected on this year’s programme: “Out of 24 titles that comprise this year’s International Competition, three intriguing titles will be presented to the audience both at the festival and in our warm-up programme, Fall in Love with Documentaries. These are the already announced Sundance winner Wolfpack, a spectacular documentary on mankind Human, director’s cut, and the South Korean box office hit My Love Don’t Cross That River.”

Among the films with prestigious nominations in International Competition is a current Oscar nominee for best documentary film and a BAFTA nominee Cartel Land by Matthew Heineman. As always, the competition includes many stylistically daring and innovative works that cross the boundaries of documentary genre, such as the intimate, indecent, touching and humorous, Rotterdam award-winning Chinese hybrid Poet on a Business Trip by Ju Anqi and the interesting contemporary investigation into the Chernobyl disaster, The Russian Woodpecker by Chad Garcia, the winner of Sundance’s World Cinema Jury Grand Prix. Innovative approach combining the intimate and the universal is also championed by the Dutch film about rising egocentrism in the western world, A Strange Love Affair with Ego, directed by Ester Gould, the winner in best Dutch documentary category at IDFA.

The Regional Competition includes a total of 27 films. The French-Bulgarian And the Party Goes On and On by Gueorgui Balabanov is a tragic comedy about modern Bulgarian society. The Slovenian Home by Metod Pevec, the winner at Portorož Film Festival, covers the stories and destinies of tenants in a five-storey building in Ljubljana, construction workers from Bosnia and Herzegovina who found temporary housing there some 30 years ago. Marginalised people, petty dealers, alcoholics and criminals from the American South are in the focus of Italian filmmaker Roberto Minervini’s film The Other Side, screened in Un Certain Regard at Cannes. The Regional Competition also includes Train to Adulthood by Klára Trencsényi, three children’s coming-of-age story who work at the Children’s Railway in Budapest.

The Regional Competition includes 12 Croatian documentaries. These are 4.7 by Đuro Gavran, Clerical Error by Tin Bačun, Roommates by Katarina Zlatec and Ante Zlatko Stolica, Candidate by Tomislav Pulić and Robert Tomić Zuber, Islands of Forgoten Cinemas by Ivan Ramljak, Short Family Film by Igor Bezinović, Lila by Igor Bogdanović, Tonight by Zdravko Mustać, Justice by Nebojša Slijepčević, Sanja by Nikica Zdunić, Third Best by Arsen Oremović, and Turizam by Tonći Gaćina.

Official programmes also feature a series of outstanding titles. For instance, Masters of Dox include the new film by ZagrebDox’s My Generation Award winner Helena Třeštíkova, a drug addict’s portrait Mallory, the best documentary award winner at Karlovy Vary. Biography Dox introduces us to Marlon Brando in a film packed with unknown archive footage, Listen to Me Marlon by British director Stevan Riley, and Musical Globe features Bolshoi Babylon, an acclaimed doc casting a glance behind the scenes of the famed Russian ballet company that reached the headlines in 2013 when the ballet manager was attacked with acid. ZagrebDox’s official programmes also include Happy Dox, Controversial Dox, State of Affairs, Teen Dox and Factumentaries.

Special programmes this year showcase two intriguing novelties. Russians Are Coming features nine documentaries about contemporary Russia and former Soviet Union countries, and Children Changing the World comprises short documentaries made by refugee children who sought asylum in Austria and in a refugee camp in Jordan. Retrospective programmes at 12th ZagrebDox will present Italian-Swedish filmmaker Erik Gandini and Georgian director Nino Kirtadzé, while the author’s night will be dedicated to Bruno Gamulin. The ZagrebDoXXL platform this year again features a series of round tables, discussion and expanded Q&A sessions, and special events will organise a bicycle caravan (related to the screening of Bikes Vs. Cars) and a series of VR screenings in association with Croatian Telecom and Samsung.

“Croatian Telecom continues partnering the leading film festivals in Croatia. As usual, we start our tour with Factum and ZagrebDox, which give us the very best of the world documentary scene. Croatian Telecom this year again makes it possible to enjoy the finest documentary titles for those unable to come to the festival. These films will be available exclusively in MAXtv video library and MAXtv To Go platform immediately after the screening. Aside from the fantastic programme, festival visitors will get a chance to try out new technologies: watch short interactive documentaries on VR Samsung goggles at MAXtv Filmofeel corner, along with other sorts of entertainment. We wish you a good time and positive vibes. See you at 12th ZagrebDox!” said Sanja Milinović, head of the direct market placement department at Croatian Telecom.

ZagrebDox is supported by City of Zagreb, Croatian Audiovisual Centre and Creative Europe – MEDIA Sub-programme. Croatian Telecom is the general sponsor of ZagrebDox for 11th time around. For more info please visit www.zagrebdox.net.