In March this year, our festival had the honor of hosting one of the world’s most important film festivals – Venice Film Festival (Mostra).

Over a period of five days (2 – 6 March), in the Europa Cinema, a selection of a dozen films was shown as part of the Venice in Zagreb Program (A Bigger Splash by Luca Guadagnino, The Wait by Piero Messina, Italian Academy Award entry Don’t Be Bad by Claudio Caligari, the restored version of Mario Moncelli’s We Want the Colonels from 1973, etc.), accompanied by a few interesting guests and the exhibition of photographs by the winner of the Coppa Volpi Award (awarded to best actress and actor for eighty years now).

By presenting this program, Zagreb has joined the group of cities around the world – such as Moscow, St. Petersburg, Beirut, and Singapore – that have hosted this world-famous film festival. In addition to promoting the films from the official competition of Mostra and Italian cinema in general, this program aims at establishing relationships between the international festivals that go beyond the narrow selection of the program presented.

The cooperation with Mostra is just one of the initiatives positioning Zagreb Film Festival on the European film map. We are glad to announce the fourth edition of this program, which is to be held in early 2017. The program is realized in cooperation with the Zagreb Film Festival, Venice Film Festival and Italian Cultural Institute in Zagreb.