The documentary-fiction hybrid Fiume o Morte! directed and written by Igor Bezinović took home the Best European Documentary Award, accepted in person by Bezinović, who dedicated the award to the citizens of his native Rijeka, and producer Vanja Jambrović (Restart). The awards ceremony held in Berlin and Bezinović’s acceptance speech are available for viewing on the European Film Academy’s Instagram profile, at this link.

Fiume competed alongside four other titles nominated in the Best Documentary category, while it was also nominated in the Best European Film category, along with 14 other titles, with Joachim Trier's Sentimental Value bringing home the victory.

The documentary had its world premiere at the prestigious International Film Festival Rotterdam, where it won the festival’s main Tiger Award and the FIPRESCI Prize. Since then, it has travelled the world from Australia, across Taiwan, all the way to Mexico, screening at New York’s MoMA, being selected for as many as 50 festivals around the world, winning numerous awards, and also sweeping the board with as many as six Golden Arenas at last year’s Pula Film Festival.

Fiume o Morte! likewise earned considerable acclaim and was a box-office hit across Croatian cinemas – garnering an audience of 38,948 viewers nationwide in 2025, making it the most watched Croatian documentary in history. It is available for viewing online, free of charge, on the platform ondemand.kinomeetingpoint.ba, from January 22, as part of the Winter Edition of the Network of Festivals in the Adriatic Region (NFAR).

The hybrid documentary was also voted as Croatia’s contender for an Academy Award nomination, awarded by the US Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and for a Goya Award of the Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences of Spain.

It is a Restart production, with Vanja Jambrović and Tibor Keser as producers, in co-production with companies Nosorogi from Slovenia (co-produced Marina Gumzi) and Videomante from Italy (co-produced Erica Barbiani).

In addition, the fiction feature Little Trouble Girls of screenwriter and director Urška Djukić was also nominated for a European Film Award. Created as a Slovenian-Italian-Croatian-Serbian co-production, Little Trouble Girls was nominated in the European Discovery – Prix FIPRESCI category for debut full-length features, presented in co-operation with FIPRESCI, the International Federation of Film Critics. 

Its main producers are Jožko Rutar and Miha Černec, while the feature is a SPOK Films production, created in co-production with Staragara (Italy), Non-Aligned Films (Serbia), 365 Films (Croatia) and Rhinos (Slovenia).

Little Trouble Girls had its world premiere in the Perspectives competition at the 75th Berlinale, and its North American premiere at the 24th Tribeca Film Festival, where it also won the award for Best Cinematography in an International Narrative Feature (Lev Predan Kowarski), going on to screen at other prestigious film festivals such as Karlovy Vary and Sofia.

The film’s co-producer is Katarina Prpić (356 Films), while other Croatian crew members include editor Vlado Gojun, assistant make-up artist Anela Sokolac, and Srđan Kokanov and Filip Friščić in the camera section.

Little Trouble Girls is also one of the titles selected for European Film Promotion’s programme Europe! Voices of Women+ In Film. 

Photo: Igor Bezinović and Vanja Jambrović (© 38th European Film Awards Berlin 2026, Sebastian Gabsch)