Zagreb Film Festival wraps the successful and diverse industry programme of its 17th edition
- A wide and varied selection of industry events, ranging from film and television to video games, formed the rich industry programme of this year's Zagreb Film Festival
The 17th edition of the Zagreb Film Festival presented a wide and varied selection of industry events, mixing the staple diet of workshops such as My First Script, My First Video Game and Industry Youth! (pitching workshop and forum) with master classes and panels held by established professionals. This year's choice of topics saw the trend of spreading the focus from strictly cinema to other branches of the audiovisual industry such as television and video games.
My First Script had started to bear fruits in the previous two editions of the Zagreb Film Festival, with Elmir Jukić's The Frog [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] screened two years ago and last year's Golden Pram winner, Ognjen Glavonić's The Load [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Ognjen Glavonić
film profile]. This year, another project developed through the workshop, Dana Budisavljević's The Diary of Diana B [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Dana Budisavljević
film profile], was screened at the festival's PLUS sidebar, where it triumphed. The workshop participants from Croatia, Serbia, UK, Czech Republic and Greece (see the list below) were mentored by established Croatian filmmakers and scriptwriters Ognjen Sviličić and Antonio Nuić.
The Zagreb Film Festival, in collaboration with Croatia’s Creative Europe MEDIA Desk, also featured the workshop Storytelling for Television conducted by Hayley McKenzie and Kay Stonham from the company Script Angel. The three-day workshop offered participants the chance to learn more about storytelling for TV, how to prepare market-ready projects and how to find co-producers for them. Within the frame of the workshop, Hayley McKenzie also had her master class Creating Compelling Television Drama Series, focusing on storytelling differences between feature films and TV drama series.
Two master classes and one panel took place under the umbrella of the Video Games: Interactive Empathy project, started by Goethe-Institut and Institut Français in Croatia, with the support of the Franco-German Cultural Fund and led by Srđan Laterza. The Making of Trüberbrook master class was delivered by director Florian Köhne and lead artist Hans Böhme who talked about the detective / sci-fi / adventure video game and its making, more specifically the process of turning the miniature models and scenery, made from scratch, into interactive levels for a computer game. The other master class, Narrative Design for Video Games, was conducted by Emmanuel Corno, focusing on which tools a game designer needs to build a convincing narrative. The master class was followed with a presentation of two video games (Empathy Path and There Is No Cure and That's OK), developed through the Interactive Empathy project under Corno's mentorship. The panel Can You Make an Artistic Hit Game? saw a discussion between Böhme, Köhne, Corno, Aleksandar Gavrilović of Zagreb-based indie studio Gamechuck, Vjera Matković (head of the Media and Audio-visuals Office at the Croatian Ministry of Culture) and Davor Švaić (Vice-Dean for International Cooperation at the Zagreb Academy for Dramatic Arts and project coordinator of an EU project for establishment of an M.A. in game design at the University of Zagreb). It was moderated by Srđan Laterza.
Sona Morgenthalová of MIDPOINT guided the audience through two of their projects, Feature Launch and TV Launch for first- and second-time feature film projects, as well as television and web-series. MIDPOINT is a training and networking platform for script and project development, aimed at teams of producers, writers and directors from Central and Eastern Europe that is supported by FAMU academy in Prague.
Who's That Playin' Over There? was a panel discussion about original music as a dramaturgical element in contemporary cinema. The members of the panel were some of the most important film composers in Croatia today: Jura Ferina and Pavle Mihaljević (of Fine Dead Girls and Hush [+see also:
trailer
interview: Tihana Lazovic
film profile] fame), Alen and Nenad Sinkauz (Goran [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Nevio Marasović
film profile], The Diary of Diana B) and Hrvoje Štefotić (Mondo Bobo, Mali [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Antonio Nuić
film profile]).
Finally, Industry Youth! Pitching Workshop and Forum brought seven projects from seven film schools from five countries of the ex-Yugoslav region. After the workshop coordinated by the producers Inja Korać, Lana Matić and Čedomir Kolar, the participants (full list below) pitched their projects to the jury consisting of Tomislav Vujnović of the post-production studio Vizije S.F.T, Goran Turković of Šešnić&Turković graphic design and visual communication studio and Marta Fernandes of Midas Filmes. The winning pitch was Ljubljana ARGFT's project Tempest presented by Martin Anton Emeršič and Jaka Žilavec, and it was awarded with image post-production by Vizije and poster design by Šešnić&Turković, while the second-placed project, Zagreb ADU's Thirst in the Moonlight, presented by Marko Dugonjić and Suzana Erbežnik, was awarded with image post-production by Vizije.
My First Script Workshop participants:
The Burst - Maja Šuša (Serbia)
The Graduates - Hrvoje Mabić (Croatia)
Man Accidentally Kills - Sean Robert Dunn (UK)
Palma de Varboska - Daria Keršić (Croatia)
Souvenir - Thanos Psychogios (Grece)
The Star - Pavel Ruzyak (Czech Republic)
Industry Youth! Pitching Workshop and Forum participants:
Thirst in the Moonlight - Marko Dugonjić (Academy of Dramatic Arts - ADU Zagreb, Croatia)
Tempest - Martin Anton Emeršič (Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television - ARGFT Ljubljana, Slovenia)
Five More Minutes - Almir Zoletić (Academy of Performing Arts - ASU Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina)
Ivan Vasiljevich Had No Luck - Anica Ražnatović (Faculty of Dramatic Arts - FDU Beograd, Serbia)
Reverse - Andrija Mugoša (Faculty of Dramatic Arts - FDU Cetinje, Montenegro)
In One Night - Batuhan Ibrahim (Faculty of Dramatic Arts - FDU Skopje, North Macedonia)
In the Nation of Car Lovers - Sagar Gahatraj, Carolina Silveira ( University of Nova Gorica School of Arts - UNG AU Nova Gorica, Slovenia)
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