At the Crossing Europe festival, Sandbag Dam was part of the youth film competition in the section YASSS!. The titles were selected by young festival programmers and awarded by a young jury. The feature, directed by Čejen Černić Čanak, received a Special Mention.

The film is currently on a fruitful festival tour. In April, the director presented it live at the Lovers Film Festival in Turin, and it simultaneously also screened in London and Stockholm. It had its North American premiere at the festival in Boston, Massachusetts, followed by screenings in Istanbul and Linz.

Sandbag Dam had its world premiere at the 75th Berlinale, as part of the competition programme Generation. 

Based on the screenplay by award-winning playwright and novelist Tomislav Zajec, Sandbag Dam focuses on a young athlete, Marko (Lav Novosel), whose neat life is shaken by the return of Slaven (Andrija Žunac), his forbidden childhood love. And while the whole village fears the impending flood and builds a sandbag dam to protect their homes, Marko will try to build an embankment around himself, defending himself from his own emotions. But water always finds a way. 

In addition to Lav Novosel and Andrija Žunac, the film also stars Leon Grgić, Franka Mikolaci, Tanja Smoje, Alma Prica, Filip Šovagović and Luka Baškarad.

With Kinorama as the lead producer, Sandbag Dam is a co-production with companies Tremora from Lithuania and Perfo Production from Slovenia. The producers are Ankica Jurić Tilić, Hrvoje Pervan and Dragan Jurić, with co-producers Ieva Norvilienė, Aleš Pavlin and Andrej Štritof. The film was financially supported by the Croatian Audiovisual Centre, Film Centre of Lithuania, Slovenian Film Centre, Viba Film Studio and Creative Europe – Media.

The short film Kismet, directored by Žiga Virc and written by Iza Strehar, for which this was its world premiere, won the award at the Short Film Festival Oberhausen. The short, which screened in Oberhausen in the children and youth competition, is a co-production with Croatian company Nukleus Film, while the co-producer is Siniša Juričić.

Kismet follows the story of 11-year-old Milena from the Roma community, who faces a turning point in her life, as her older sister prepares for her wedding. While everyone around her expects she will soon follow in her sister’s footprints, Milena secretly doubts whether this is really her destiny. In a world where everything seems predetermined, she tries to fight for her right to choose.

“Our Special Mention goes to a film that opens insights into the most intimate moments of a family consisting of women from different generations who disagree about the traditions of their Roma community. It was especially interesting to us that all actors are actually part of the community and partly improvised their own stories. While this feature shows some dark and oppressive situations in the young girl’s life, we quickly realise that she also finds a lot of love and understanding in her family. We think that this is important, because otherwise it would simply be a confirmation of outsiders’ pre-existing prejudices,” said the jury statement.

Kismet, which was filmed in Croatia, stars Jador Delić, Severina Lajtman and Dijana Delić. The film’s producer is Boštjan Virc for production company Studio Virc, in co-production with Croatian company Nukleus Film and the Slovenian Korektif. The short was made with the support from the Slovenian Film Centre, Croatian Audiovisual Centre, and Viba Film Studio.