Film What a Country! awarded at the 60th Thessaloniki International Film Festival
At the 60th Thessaloniki International Film Festival the dark comedy What a Country! by Vinko Brešan won the audience award in the competition section Balkan Survey. The Greek film festival was held from 31 October to 10 November. Brešan already won the audience award in Thessaloniki in 2013 with his film The Priest’s Children.
What a Country! competed among 25 titles from Romania, Turkey, Bulgaria, Serbia, North Macedonia and other countries. In addition to his film, the festival also features three Croatian minority co-productions: feature film God Exists, her name is Petrunija by Teona Strugar Mitevska, and shorts The Last Picture of Father by Stefan Đorđević and The Flood by Kristijan Krajnčan.
At the closing ceremony of the Festival on 10 November the award for the best Greek film was given to Siege On Liperti Stree by the director Stavros Pamballis, while another Greek film, Defunct by Zacharias Mavroeidis, won in the international competition section.
The Thessaloniki International Film Festival is one of the oldest festivals in Europe. It was founded in 1959 and is one of the most important places for promoting regional cinema industries. More information about the festival is available at its official website.
The film What a Country! had its international premiere at this year’s prestigious Warsaw Film Festival. It won a number of awards so far, including the Golden Arena award for best actor in a lead role (Krešimir Mikić) and the Golden Arena for best screenplay by Mate Matišić. Besides that, the film was also voted best film at the 48th Film Festival 'SOFEST' in Sopot, a historical award since it was the first non-Serbian majority co-production that won the Grand Prix of that national festival.
Producer of the film What a Country! is Ivan Maloča, co-producer is Lazar Ristovski, screenplay was written by Mate Matišić, Branko Linta is the director of photography, Ana Bulajić Črček is the make-up designer, Željka Franulović is the costume designer, the art director is Damir Gabelica, Sandra Botica Brešan did the editing, while the executive producer is Maja Vukić.
Along with Interfilm, this film was co-produced by Orka Production Studio from Warsaw and Zillion film from Belgrade, supported by the Croatian Audiovisual Centre, the Polish Film Institute, the Film Centre Serbia, the Polish Television, Eurimages and the EU fund Creative Europe – MEDIA and the Croatian Radio-Television.
Cover photo: scene from the film What a Country!