Coinciding with the Danish royal state visit to Croatia, the 12^th Zagreb Film Festival has scheduled a Danish Focus with 11 films from the country and a co-production meeting as part of the 19-26 October programme, with Queen Margrethe and Prince Henrik attending the Focus opening on 22 October.

The collaboration between the film industries in the two countries was instigated in 2011 with the Danish-Croatian co-production of Danish director Birgitte Stærmose’s Room 304 [+leggi anche:
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scheda film]; most recently, Danish filmmaker Ole Christian Madsen has shot a major part of his new feature, Itsi Bitsi [+leggi anche:
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scheda film], in Croatia – the title will launch the Danes Go South spotlight in Zagreb together with Hlynur Pálmason’s short, Seven Boats.

As a relatively new film-producing country, Croatia has been greatly inspired by Denmark – which is almost the same size – when developing its film legislation and establishing its national film institute, according to the head of the Croatian Audiovisual Centre, Hrvoje Hribar, who will stage the Danish-Croatian co-production meeting.

Danish director Søren Balle’s feature debut, The Sunfish, and Seven Boats will both screen in competition, while seven Danish children’s films (with one Croatian movie) make up the Bib for Kids section, ranging from Astrid Henning-Jensen’s Palle Alone in the World (1949) to Martin Miehe-Renard’s The Contest [+leggi anche:
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Danish poet and mainly documentary filmmaker Jørgen Leth, who most recently collaborated with Danish director Simon Staho on his ekko DVD Five Investigations, will host a master class at the festival, which unspools at six theatres in the Croatian capital.