International feature film program kicks off with A Real Pain and Julie Keeps Quiet at CineStar, while Kinoteka screens Emilia Pérez,
alongside the Checkers program and international shorts

 At CineStar Branimir, the race for the main festival award, the Golden Pram, starts with the first two titles in the international Feature Film competition. A Real Pain (at 10:30 and 18:30, CineStar Branimir) is the second directorial achievement of renowned actor Jesse Eisenberg. The Sundance Screenwriting Award-winning story of two cousins (Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin) who go to Poland to pay tribute to their late grandmother, is a bitter-sweet and entertaining road movie about family, identity, history and the neuroses of modernday adulthood.

Leonardo van Dijl’s suspenseful character study, Julie Keeps Quiet (13:00 and 21:00, CineStar) boasts a top-notch film crew, including director of photography Nicolas Karakatsanis (I, Tonya, Cruella), while the music score was composed by Pulitzer Prize-winner Caroline Shaw. The critics have particularly praised the performance of lead actress Tessa Van den Broeck, who will present the film to the Zagreb audience at the evening screening, together with co-star Grace Biot.

The PLUS and Together Again competition programs also start at Cinestar. Neo Sora’s Happyend (PLUS, CineStar, 18:00) is a dystopian Japanese drama which premiered at the Venice Film Festival, while This is Not a Love Song by Nevio Marasović (Together Again, CineStar, 20:30 PM) is a romantic drama starring Lana Barić and Janko Popović Volarić in the role of ex-lovers who meet after many years to co-write a film about their relationship. The latter will be presented by the film’s crew, in attendance at the screening.

Cinema Kinoteka is scheduled to host the first screenings of the KinoKino, The Great 5 and Short Film competition programs. KinoKino, a program dedicated to the youngest cinephiles, brings the story of an autistic boy in search of his favorite football club Weekend Rebels (age 8+), directed by Marco Rothemund, at 11:00 and 18:00, while The Great 5 presents Emilia Pérez, the glorious and daring pop opera directed by Jacques Audiard (A Prophet, Rust and Bone, Dheepan) and the winner of the Jury Prize and the Best Actress Award (for the ensemble cast Selena Gomez, Karla Sofía Gascón, Zoe Saldaña, Adriana Paz) at Cannes, both screening at Kordunska 3.

The 10 p.m. evening slot has traditinally been reserved for international short films and up-and-coming authors of domestic shorts. On the first day, the schedule includes Machines by Sigurd Bleken, and Marion by Joe Weiland and Finn Constantine, and in the Checkers program The Lambkin by Martina Marasović and At the Table by Ivan Veljača. The films will be presented to the audience by their authors and film crew members.

At 18:00, head over to the Museum of Contemporary Art for the first title in the Network of Festivals in the Adriatic Region program, Stefanie Kolk’s Milk, a touching and melancholic drama about grief and loss, screened in Venice, Warsaw and Rotterdam, while at 19:00, pop into Dokukino KIC, where the Festivals in the Spotlight program brings a selection of shorts from the Locarno Film Festival.

Industry, the program intended for the training and networking of film professionals, brings as many as three events on Tuesday: the all-day Small Cinemas Conference, the round table Audio description and accessibility of AV content for people with visual impairment (Scenoteka, 11:00) and the presentation Creative Europe MEDA – how to apply for development calls?.

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