Ognjen Sviličić’s feature film The Voice will be screened as part of the Feature film competitive program of the 29th edition of the Festival of East European Film in the German town Cottbus, as well as two minority Croatian co-productions: Love Cuts directed by Kosta Đorđević and screenplay by Dragan Nikolić, which is a Serbian-Croatian co-production (the Croatian producer is Ivan Marinić Kragić, Marinis Media), and Aga’s House a debut feature film by director and screenwriter Lendita Zeqiraj, which was produced by n’Art Creative Studio from Kosova, with co-production from France, Croatia and Albania (the Croatian co-producer is Woof Films). 

As part of the competitive program dedicated to films for the youth, Ines Tanović’s film The Son will be shown, the result of Bosnian and Hercegovina’s, Croatian, Romanian, Slovenian and Montenegrin co-production (the Croatian co-producer is Zdenka Gold, Spiritus Movens), which is also the Bosnian and Hercegovina’s candidate for the Oscar awards nomination.

The Croatian feature films The Last Serb in Croatia by Predrag Ličina and The Diary of Diana B. by Dana Budisavljević have been included in the section Spectrum, dedicated to ‘provocative, radical and honest’ films.

Marina Andree Škop’s and Dražen Žarković’s film My Grandpa Is an Alien has been included in the children’s film section.

A focus program dedicated to contemporary Montenegrin cinematography will also be held as part of the Cottbus Film Festival, and among the selected titles is the Croatian minority co-production, the feature film Breasts, directed by Marija Perović (the Croatian co-producer is Sanja Šamanović, Mitropa). 

In the section titled Architectural Heritage, the medium length documentary film by Ivan Ramljak, Home of the Resistance will be shown, as well as two episodes from the series Slumbering concrete: Socialism Meets Capitalism and The City That Was Too Modern. The screenplays for the episodes were written by  Saša Ban, Maroje Mrduljaš and Nevenka Sablić, and they were produced for HRT by the company Hulahop.

Aside from this, at the co-production marketplace, Connecting Cottbus, through the pitching section cocoPitch, director and screenwriter Dubravka Turić’s and producer Ira Cecić’s (Kinorama) feature film project Traces will be presented. The Croatian Audiovisual Centre co-financed development of the screenplay and production of the project. A total of 13 projects from 14 countries of Eastern Europe will be participating in cocoPitch, and you can see a list of all the projects here. The co-production marketplace at Cottbus is being held from 6 to 8 of November.

The festival in Cottbus was founded in 1991 and is considered one of the most important events dedicated to East European film in the world. A total of 18 awards are presented at the festival, and you can find more details on the official website Cottbus Film Festival.