During the upcoming 19th Zagreb Film Festival, ZFF’s platform Industry will feature lectures of renowned international filmmakers, workshops for all generations, pitching sessions and thematic panels. During eight days, Industry will host prominent film experts who will reveal specific creative and practical aspects of film production to the audience and interested participants, but also support new talents and their developing projects with their advice.

Serbian director and producer Stefan Arsenijević, whose feature film As Far As I Can Walk is part of this year’s ZFF competition, will hold a masterclass on how he integrated the topic of modern refugees and the Balkan migration route into his new film which was awarded Best Film at this year’s Karlovy Vary Film Festival. The event will be held in collaboration with the Filmmakers Association of Croatia, as well as the masterclass by Katia Pascariu, who will reveal more about working with one of the greatest contemporary Romanian directors and about filming the Golden Bear winning film in the midst of the pandemic. Katia Pascariu is also the member of ZFF’s jury for feature film, along with the esteemed Croatian cinematographer working in Hollywood, Vanja Černjul, whose masterclass, organized with Restart, will analyze his most important film and television projects on his professional journey, which includes series such as Nurse Jackie and The Deuce.

Television series will be the focus of the program Series Rough Pitch – The Balkan Way which is jointly organized by Creative Europe Desk – MEDIA Office from Croatia, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Greece, and Slovenia. This pitching event is aimed at projects of TV series in development, since the Subprogram MEDIA 2021 — 2027 emphasizes the development of this form. The projects selected to participate via public call will be presented to the international jury of experts and moderated by head of the Creative Europe Desk — MEDIA Office Croatia Martina Petrović. A workshop will also be held as part of this program, led by acclaimed film experts, award-winning producer Helena Granqvist and esteemed screenwriter and advisor Valerija Richter.

The goal of the panel Spotlight Italy is to strengthen co-production collaboration between Croatia and Italy, organized by the Italian Institute for International Trade in Zagreb — ICE Agency, in cooperation with the Italian Embassy in Croatia, the Italian Cultural Institute in Zagreb and ZFF Industry. Guest experts from the Italian film industry will present their national audiovisual system, with special emphasis on the possibilities of co-producing. They will also touch upon the Italian co-production forum When East Meets West, as well as the RE-ACT workshops, whose aim is to strengthen the existing collaboration between audiovisual systems of different countries.

Video games — the fastest growing segment in the audiovisual industry — are the topic of the lecture and panel titled Why are video games different…?, organized in collaboration with the French Institute, the Goethe Institute, and the Academy of Dramatic Art Zagreb. Based on selected examples, professor emeritus at CNAM in Paris and founder of the video game production company La Compagnie des Martingales, Stéphane Natkin, will cover the basic principles of construction and the future of video games. He will be joined for a discussion by Thierry Baujard, co-founder of the platform SpielFabrique, Mario Čelan, the director of SIMORA agency and business incubator Pismo, Chris Marcich, head of the Croatian Audiovisual Centre who just announced a public call for the development and production of video games, and the Dean at the Academy of Dramatic Art in Zagreb, Davor Švaić, head of the new interdisciplinary studio project Edu4Games.

As one of the central segments of Industry, the workshop programs encompass different education and practical sessions aimed at almost all age groups. At the tenth edition of the workshop My First Script, six selected authors will have the opportunity to develop their scripts under the mentorship of screenwriters and directors Antonio Nuić and Pjer Žalica, who will be joined by guest lecturer David Pope, consultant and educator with impressive international experience. Along with screenwriters from Spain, Poland, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Syria, two Croatian authors will perfect their scripts — director Lana Kosovac, whose short films have toured Croatian and regional festivals, and award-winning playwright and novelist Dino Pešut. It is worth noting that Sonja Tarokić developed the script for her debut feature film at this workshop in 2013 and we eagerly await The Staffroom in this year’s main program. Twelve students from six film academies from the region — Ljubljana, Belgrade, Sarajevo, Cetinje, Skopje and Zagreb, will take part in the program Industry Youth!, where they will develop their short feature films in intensive workshops and present them to the international jury at the pitching open to the public.

Schoolchildren will have the opportunity to learn how video games are made in the workshop My First Video Game, while the workshop Read What You Watch will reflect on the connections between film and literature on the examples of literary and film versions of Pinocchio and The Mystery of Green Hill. Film lovers over 54 years of age will have the opportunity to participate in the film critics’ workshop and review films from the program Network of Festivals. The workshop From Cinema to Classroom: Teaching Methodology of Short Films, aimed for teachers and all who participate in the education system, will provide examples of quality films and teaching tools for organizing thematic lessons. Beside these film and other related topics, there will also be an online workshop and a lecture on one of the burning issues of today’s world — waste. Ana Marija Mileusnić from Green Action will talk about reducing one’s personal waste and how to contribute to decreasing the negative environmental impact.