This year, ZFF’s side programs once again match the main competition in terms of quality! The expansion of the PLUS program to include features dealing with coming-of-age stories in an inventive and daring way, is a logical continuation of the long-standing focus on up-and-coming authors who are especially interesting to young audiences.

Features from the PLUS program, together with selected titles from the main programme, will compete for the Young Jury Award, made up of cinephiles aged 16 to 21. Lithuanian director Saule Bliuvaite’s Toxic, winner of the Golden Leopard for Best Film at the Locarno Film Festival, opens a window into the merciless world of modelling and catwalks from the perspective of two teenage girls.

Good One, director India Donaldson’s debut feature that premiered at Sundance, is a witty, grounded and deeply compassionate portrayal of a watershed moment in a parent-child relationship.

Happyend, directed by Neo Sora, the son of the famous composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, is a Japanese dystopian drama about young people’s stubborn insistence on dreaming of a better future, and it premiered at the Venice International Film Festival.

Also competing for the Young Jury Award is a feature from the main programme, Julie Keeps Quiet, a tense character study brought to us by Belgian director Leonardo van Dijl. A talented tennis player finds herself in the midst of a scandal involving her coach, to which she decides to respond – with silence. The feature premiered in the Cannes Critics’ Week, was nominated for this year’s LUX Audience Award, and is also Belgium’s Academy Award contender.

While the PLUS programme enters a more mature, adolescent phase, this year’s The Great 5, the most popular ZFF side programme, will not let down the Zagreb audience, accustomed to a selection of outstanding recent films from the five biggest European national cinemas cinemas.

ZFF will offer the opportunity to see the Croatian premiere of the long-awaited Emilia Pérez, the new feature of the famous French director Jacques Audiard (A Prophet, Rust and Bone, Dheepan), starring Zoe Saldaña, Selena Gomez and Karla Sofía Gascón. This musical, which is an amalgam of different genres – crime, comedy and a heartwarming drama of trans empowerment, all in the milieu of Mexican drug cartels – was the only title to receive two awards at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. The first is a special Jury Prize for Direction, while the second is the Best Actress award for the ensemble cast, for the perfect depiction of “the harmony of sisterhood”.

The Italian representative in the programme, https://zff.hr/en/movies/diva-futura/Diva Futura by Giulia Louise Steigerwalt, takes us back to the 80s and 90s, exploring the birth of the Italian porn industry through the stories of its pioneering icons like Cicciolina and Moana Pozzi. Combining comedy and tragedy, the film offers a look at this controversial period marked by the work of the eponymous film agency. Diva Futura premiered in the main competition at the Venice Film Festival, while Croatian actress Tesa Litvan (Even Pigs Go to Heaven, The Diary of Diana B.) appears in one of the leading roles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUeKyL4bCMk