This year's competition had a record number of 105 films registered for the Croatian programme. Arts Council members, Hrvoje Pukšec, its President and members Mike Downey and Tanja Miličić chose 16 feature films and 17 short films in the selection process that make up the 63rd Festival Croatian programme. Feature film premieres include Ministry of Love by Pavo Marinković, Confusions by Lana Kosovac, Trampoline by Katarina Zrinka Matijević and All the Best by Snježana Tribuson. In competition are also Generation ’68 by Nenad Puhovski, Shooting Stars by Ivan-Goran Vitez and On the Other Side by Zrinko Ogresta, while The Blue Cage by Bruna Bajić, Life is a Trumpet by Antonio Nuić and The Liberation of Skopje (world premiere) by Rade Šerbedžija and Danilo Šerbedžija will be screened out of competition.

Through the selection of the International programme, the Festival remains one of the few festivals in Croatia which seeks films "without distributors". In this way 16 international feature films were selected: Aloys by Tobias Nölle, Between Sea and Land by Carlos del Castillo, Chevalier by Athina Rachel Tsangari, Evolution by Lucile Hadzihalilovic, Illegitimate by Adrian Sitaru, Kaili Blues by Gan Bi, Mammal by Rebecca Daly, Mountain by Yaëlle Kayam, The Dreamed Ones by Ruth Beckermann, The Yard by Måns Månsson and Things to Come by Mia Hansen-Love. Chronic by Michel Franco, Planet Single by Mitja Okorn, Independence Day: Resurgence by Roland Emmerich, Ice Age: Collision Course by Mike Thurmeier and Galen T. Chu and Ghostbusters by Paul Feig will be screened out of competition.

This year's Festival is marked by women forces in film with an extremely large number of selected films directed by women, and a retrospective dedicated to the world known director Marta Mészáros, who will be awarded with the Golden Arena prize for lifetime achievement. Mészáros is one of the world's most remarkable film directors whose films have marked the most important international film festivals and greatly changed the world in which we live. She is the first woman to have directed a Hungarian film and the first woman to win the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. 

Best films from recent Croatian history

Apart from the current Croatian and international films at this year's festival, visitors will be able to see the best films from recent Croatian history. After twenty five years of independent film production in Croatia, Pula Film Festival decided to find out which are the best films since Croatia’s independence. The lists of the best films appear sporadically and mostly come from film critics. This time, members of film pofessional associations (Croatian Film Directors’ Guild, Croatian Cinematographers Society, Croatian Producers Association, Film Makers Association of Croatia, and Croatian Society of Film Critics) had the task to select the five best films but found seven (due to the equal number of points received). The magnificent seven make the programme of this year's Pula Cinemateque: What Iva Recorded on October 21st, 2003 by Tomislav Radić, Celestial Body by Lukas Nola, The Blacks by Goran Dević and Zvonimir Jurić, Fine Dead Girls by Dalibor Matanić, The Reaper by Zvonimir Jurić, Metastases by Branko Schmidt and The High Sun by Dalibor Matanić.

Adding special spice to this year's programme is a preview of the new Croatian series Novine (The Paper) by Dalibor Matanić. The first two episodes will be shown as part of the Festival which all the visitors will be able to see. There are also film programmes specially designed for children and young people, Pulica and Dizalica (Crane), that will screen a total of 11 films.

This year's educational and industry programme PULA PROfessional, designed for film professionals and students of audiovisual activities, in cooperation with Palunko, Croatian Film Association’s screenplay platform, stresses the importance of screenplay. Pula Film Festival invited four guests who are very aware of the screenwriting problems: Jasmina Kallay, Rebecca Lenkiewicz, Kate Leys and Jelena Paljan. Through lectures, which will cover the basics of creating, writing, editing, and the promotion of film screenplays, interested professionals at this year's festival will get a clear insight into the answers to the basic questions that plague all screenwriters in the world, how to design and then write a script for a film that will be someday produced and finally enjoyed? Also, a round table will be organised on the topic of "How important is it to show films for children and youth in supporting programmes of film festivals?" and “Women in European and Croatian film”.

Festival will also show six exhibitions, which gravitate around the Arena location. "Exhibition of contemporary Serbian film posters" by curator Miroljub Vučković, "Impromptu" by Mario Delić, "Renata Poljak: Partenza" by the curator Mladen Lučić, "Cinemaniac" by the curator Branka Benčić, "Exhibition of the School of Applied Arts and Design Pula student work" and "ATTENTION ... shooting in Istria!" organised in cooperation with the Istrian Film Commission and Daniel Rafaelić.

This year's 63rdPula Film Festival jury members are:
• CROATIAN FEATURE FILM PROGRAMME: Bruno Kragić (Croatia, film scholar), Labina Mitevska (Macedonia, actress and producer), Hrvoje Mršić (Croatia, Editor), Don Ranvaud (Great Britain, producer and journalist) and Sanja Vejnović (Croatia, actress).
• CROATIAN SHORT AND STUDENT PROGRAMMES: Chris Auty (Italy, producer), Daniel Kušan (Croatia, director) and Daniel Rafaelić (Croatia, film critic)
• INTERNATIONAL PROGRAMME: Gaby Babić (Germany, director of Wiesbaden), Stevan Filipović (Serbia, director and editor), and Ivona Juka (Croatia, director)
• NEIGHBORS AND FRIENDS: Mia Pećina (Croatia, producer), directed by Calin Peter Netzer (Romania, director) and John Ostrochovský (Slovakia, producer and director)

More information can be found here.

Cover photos: Trampoline; Ministry of love; All the Best; The Liberation of Skopje