Blind Dates triumphs at the Zagreb Film Festival
by Cineuropa
- The 12th edition of the event also saw Best Documentary go to Karpotrotter
The 12th edition of the Zagreb Film Festival (19-26 October), an international festival showing filmmakers' first or second films in its competition programme, came to a close with the awards presentation, in which Levan Koguashvili's Blind Dates [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Levan Koguashvili
film profile] won the Golden Pram Award for Best Feature Film, and a cash prize of €4,000.
The selection of 11 films was made by festival director Boris T Matić, supported by the artistic board comprising Mike Downey, Antonio Nuić and Ante Magzan, and judged by the jury made up of producer Čedomir Kolar, director Konstantin Bojanov and director of photography César Charlone.
They also gave out Special Mentions to Zeresenay Berhane Mehari's Ethiopia-US co-production Difret and Benedikt Erlingsson's Of Horses and Men [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Benedikt Erlingsson
film profile].
The same jury picked out Romanian film Kowalski by Andrei Creţulescu as the Best Short Film, a prize that came with €1,000.
Slovenian filmmaker Matjaž Ivanišin's Karpotrotter won the Golden Pram for Best Documentary, which also includes €1,000, while the winner of the Heart of Sarajevo for Best Documentary, Naked Island by Croatian director Tiha K Gudac, received a Special Mention from the jury comprising film theoretician Alice Bardan, director Željka Suková, and director and producer Petra Seliškar.
The jury of the Checkers competition, which focused on short films by up-and-coming Croatian filmmakers, was composed of the producer and host of Short Shorts Film Festival & Asia Aki Isoyama, Magma Short Film Festival manager Giulia Iannello, and director Ivan Sikavica, the winner of Checkers 2013. They bestowed the prize, worth €1,000, upon Sonja Tarokić's On Shaky Ground.
Meanwhile, the Audience Award went to Serbian director Vuk Ršumović's No One's Child [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile].
The festival's educational and networking platform, Industry, which took place for the third year in a row, attracted the most interest yet. It included master classes by Čedomir Kolar, César Charlone (City Of God) and Danish filmmaker Jørgen Leth. In addition to the Palunko and My First Script scriptwriting workshops, it also hosted the Erich Pommer Institut Workshop on Copyright Clearance, and a presentation of the collaboration between the Zagreb Film Festival and the Sarajevo film.factory programme, devised by Béla Tarr. Finally, the Danes Go South section, which placed the focus of this year's ZFF on Denmark, brought numerous Danish filmmakers and industry professionals to Zagreb.
The gathering closed with an out-of-competition screening of Roy Andersson's A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Roy Andersson
film profile], organised in co-operation with the Venice Film Festival, where the movie won the Golden Lion Award earlier this year.
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