In the documentary feature, A Year of Endless Days, director Renata Lučić visits her father who lives in Rajevo Selo in Slavonia. Renata’s birthplace is largely abandoned and, although beautiful, has very little to offer. Her father Tomo and his friend Joso stayed in the village, although their wives left them in search of a better life in Austria and Germany. The two men live alone and regularly hang out, their daily routine interrupted only by Renata’s arrival. Worried about her father’s loneliness, she tries to get to know and understand him better, as well as to understand why her family fell apart.

The director of photography was Marinko Marinkić, with producers Tamara Babun Zovko and Matija Drniković for Wolfgang&Dolly. The project won the Ex Oriente Fine Cut Award at the Ex Oriente Film training programme, and has received the support from the Croatian Audiovisual Centre and Doha Film Institute.

A Year of Endless Days will have its official premiere at DOK Leipzig on Thursday, 31st October, in the programme Panorama: Central and Eastern Europe, with director Renata Lučić, producer Tamara Babun Zovko and editor Karla Folnović in attendance.

The Croatian minority co-production Wishing on a Star by Slovak director Péter Kerekes, with Croatian co-producers Vanja Jambrović and Tibor Keser (Restart), is competing for the Audience Competition Award at the 67th DOK Leipzig. The documentary feature had its world premiere this past summer, as part of the Orizzonti programme at the 81st Venice International Film Festival, and recently screened at the 17th Central and Eastern European Film Festival – CinEast in Luxembourg.

In the industry section, the DOK Short n’ Sweet pitching platform, aimed at the financing and distribution of documentary and animated shorts, will feature Goats!, a project with Tonći Gaćina as director and Tibor Keser for Kompot as producer. In the documentary short in the making, the author explores rural life through the symbolism of the goat, a resilient animal that manages to survive in the direst of conditions.

The festival’s central co-production meeting place, DOK Co-Pro Market, will include the presentation of German director Manuel Inacker’s feature-length project The Land We Breathe, which traces global conflicts in a local setting, visible along the course of the river Krka and through its inhabitants. Alongside Inacker, the screenplay was co-written by Ana Marija Marinov, with cinematographers Boris Poljak and Falco Seliger, as well as Oliver Sertić and Vanja Jambrović of Restart as producer and associate producer.

For the second time, DOK Leipzig will be hosting the second session of the Ex Oriente Film training programme. This includes the Ex Oriente Film Documentary Laboratory, divided into two training programmes – Ex Oriente Features and Ex Oriente Series – featuring 12 feature-length documentary film and five docuseries projects.

The feature-length film section will include Be Realistic, Demand the Impossible of screenwriter and director Vanja Juranić and producers Vanja Jambrović (Restart) and Tibor Keser (Kompot). The project already won the Documentary Association of Europe – DAE AWARD in 2021, at the Doclisboa industry section, Nebulae.

The docuseries project section will feature Sport to the People of director Đuro Gavran and producer Miljenka Čogelja from Pipser. The future documentary series explores the founding, evolution, and eventual dissolution of Yugoslavia through the lens of sports.

During this year’s, 67th DOK Leipzig, running from 28th October to 3rd November, the festival will screen 209 films and XR projects from 55 countries. The winning titles in the feature documentary and animated film competition automatically qualify for the Oscars’ nomination race. Find out more about DOK Leipzig on the festival’s official website.