'I am very pleased that our film The Voice will be screened at Asia's biggest festival. Personally, it is very important to me that the film has a world premiere at the A festival because it means that it will have a festival life. At the same time, I think it is also important for Croatian film to continue its presence at major festivals, in order to keep up the continuity that was interrupted for few years', said the director Ognjen Sviličić, who, together with Marijana Verhoef, also wrote the screenplay.

The film was produced by Maxima Film, co-produced with the Macedonian Skopje Film Studio and Serbian company Biberche productions. Damir Terešak is the producer with co-producers Tomi Salkovski and Nikolina Vučetić Zečević.

The scenario of the film The Voice focuses on Goran, who comes to a Catholic boarding school. He’s a boy who refuses to pray to God because he is angry at the whole world. The more they try to force him to pray and to abide by the boarding school rules, the more rebellious he becomes. 

Franko Jakovčević and Belma Salkunić appear in leading roles for the first time. Other roles are played by Karla Brbić, Barbara Vicković, Igor Kovač, Goran Bogdan, Stipe Radoja, Josip Lukić and many others. Marinko Marinkić makes his debut in the filmmaker team as the director of photography. Ivana Škrabalo was in charge of set design, Emilija Ivanovska Atanasovska looked after costumes, Igor Perović and Ivan Kljajić were in charge of sound, while music was tasked to The Messengers, Tomislav Mihaljević and Marko Vojvodić. 

The Voice was co-financed with funds from HRT (Croatian Television), the Croatian Audiovisual Centre, the Film Centre of Serbia and North Macedonia Film Agency. 

The feature film The Son had its world premiere at this year’s Sarajevo Film Festival. The film is the work of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s director Ines Tanović, which was a co-production of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Romania, Slovenia and Montenegro. The Croatian co-producer is Zdenka Gold from Spiritus movens, while the story revolves around 17 year old Alen who lives in Sarajevo, in an ordinary family with his mother, father and brother. His problem isn’t only society, the environment, drugs … rather also the fact that he was adopted by a family, which after his arrival had a biological son. Roles in the film are played by Dino Bajrović, Snežana Bogdanović, Uliks Fehmiu, Emir Hadžihafizbegović, Lidija Kordić, Lazar Dragojević, Kemal Rizvanovic, Enes Kozličić, Ermin Bravo, Maja Izetbegović, Jernej Kogovšek, Izudin Bajrović, Admir Glamočak and many others.

Both The Voice and The Son will be shown in the programme called World cinema that encompasses new non-Asian titles of renowned directors and hit films from recently finished festivals. 

The Busan International Film Festival is one of the most significant film festivals in Asia, founded in 1996, which brings new Asian cinematography trends. It consists of ten program sections, and is also accompanied by a very developed industry segment and Asian Film Market, one of the biggest film fairs in the Eastern hemisphere. You can find out more about the festival on its official website.

Cover photographs: scenes from the film The Voice (first two photographs); scenes from the film The Son (last two photographs)