Heroism and Betrayal in Thursday’s Focus

The biggest hit of this year’s main competition program, The Lighthouse, is scheduled at 9.30 AM and 8 PM at Tuškanac Cinema. After winning the Best Director Award at Sundance for his first feature film The Witch, Robert Eggers brings another hypnotizing horror-fantasy starring Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson in the roles of two lighthouse keepers on a remote island whose close relationship starts to develop into a brutal psychological war.

The absolute winner of the Pula Film Festival, The Diary of Diana B. by Dana Budisavljević brings the untold story of heroism within the criminal regime of the Independent State of Croatia and an Austrian woman who saved more than ten thousand children from Ustasha camps during the Second World War. The screening is scheduled at 2 PM in Tuškanac Cinema with the director as the special guest.

The new film by the veteran of Italian film Marco Bellochio, The Traitor, is scheduled for 17 PM at Tuškanac Cinema. Bellochio, known for radical films which shook Italian cinematography for decades, has not slowed down in his golden years. The Traitor, which premiered in Cannes, is the Italian Oscar candidate which depicts the life of one of the most famous mafia pentitos, Tommaso Buscetta, thanks to whose testimony helped lock away hundreds of members of the Cosa Nostra in the late 80’s.

Jill & Joy and the Sleeping Clock is a film from the Bib for Kids program about exciting childhood moments without parental supervision during one summer when everything seemed possible. It will be screened at the Museum of Contemporary Art at 5 PM.

Fans of the absurdist aesthetic of the Swedish master Roy Andersson will get their fair share at 7 PM at the Museum of Contemporary Art with his new film About Endlessness, a melancholic-humorous caleidoscope about the banality of existence, life cruelties, but also beauties.

The popular program the Great 5 continues at 9 PM at the Museum of Contemporary Art with the screening of Lara, a film by the German director and a true talent of his generation, Jan-Ole Gerster. It is an intriguing study about the relationship between mother and son awarded in Karlovy Vary with the Special Jury Prize, the Best Actress Award and the Ecumenical Jury Award.

The debut film by Dušan Makavejev, Man is Not a Bird, which started the Yugoslavian Black Wave, will be screened at KIC Hall at 7 PM, continuing the special In Memoriam edition of the side program My First Film curated by Nenad Polimac.

The program in the KIC Hall continues with the program Festivals in the Spotlight in which curators of several European festivals will again specially pick films for Zagreb Film Festival’s audience, continues with the presentation of the Sarajevo Film Festival with a selection of films from Bosnia and Herzegovina’s program.

As always, the day will end in Tuškanac with the international short film program and Checkers starting at 10.30 PM. The screening includes Community Gardens by Vytautas Katkus, Eyes on the Road by Stefanie Kolk and the new films by Croatian authors The Stamp by Lovro Mrđen and Tina by Dubravka Turić.