After being screened in the Horizons section of the Venice International Film Festival and World Cinema of the Busan International Film festival, the film These Are the Rules has been selected for the 30th Warsaw Film Festival competition. The festival will show a total of about 200 feature and short films from 59 countries divided into five competitions and five non-competition categories.

The film’s leading actor Emir Hadžihafizbegović won the best actor award in Venice’s Horizons section. He stars opposite Jasna Žalica and Hrvoje Vladisavljević. The film is written and directed by Ognjen Sviličić, the cinematographer is Crystel Fournier, set designer Ivan Veljača, and costume designer Katarina Zaninović. The film producers are Damir Terešak for MaXima Film (Zagreb) and Janja Kralj for the French KinoElektron, with Nikolina Vučetić Zečević (Biberche Productions, Belgrade) and Svetozar Ristovski (Trice Films, Skopje) as co-producers. The film was backed by the Croatian Audiovisual Centre, Croatian Radio and Television, French National Centre for Cinema, Film Centre Serbia, and Film Centre Macedonia. The sale representative is the French company Urban Distribution Intl.

Also, the non-competition category Discoveries, showing chosen films from leading international festivals, will screen A Patriotic Man, the Finnish-Croatian co-production directed by Arto Halonen. The film is a sports comedy about a drug abuse scandal of the Finnish alpine skiers, filmed on several Croatian locations (Begovo razdolje, Delnice, Pokljuka, Zagreb). The music was composed by Alfi Kabiljo, make-up artist was Ana Bulajić Črček, set designer Ivica Trpčić, and the film’s Croatian co-producer is Igor A. Nola. The film benefited from the HAVC’s incentive measure scheme.

More information is available on the official festival website.

Title photographs: These Are the Rules; A Patriotic Man