The topic discussed on the current affairs talk show Otvoreno was the instance of sexual harassment allegations surrounding film director Dalibor Matanić, as well as the legal and social framework of cases of gender-based violence, abuse, and harassment in general.

The CEO of the Croatian Audiovisual Centre (HAVC), Chris Marcich, stressed that there is no doubt that the problem exists and that the real question is what could be done about it to avoid such instances in the future.

“One of the steps is to establish a call centre, but this needs to be set up outside our profession. We have to find a way to let the victims of abuse in our sector know there is a place where they can voice their complaints in complete anonymity and in confidence receive advice from a professional in the field. We will encourage the realisation of this project, in cooperation with Croatian associations.

Promotion of gender equality is one of the eight fundamental strategic goals of our National Programme. A positive example is the growing number of female directors, but there are still not many with second feature films. We are working on it and will continue to invest our efforts in this.

As part of our Regulations, we can introduce measures that will discourage such behaviour. We can, for example, introduce new rules about behaviour on set, abusive people may also be penalised, and they may be prevented from working with public funds,” Marcich said, among other things.

The full broadcast is available on this link (in Croatian):