Ten intriguing films from around the world are competing in the international short film program of the 21st ZFF.

This year we have a new film by Daniel Soares, a Portuguese director who received the Jury’s Special Mention last year for What Remains. Please Make It Work was shown at Locarno and the International Short Film Festival in Clermont-Ferrand. Scorched Earth by Markela Kontaratou and the Chinese A Tortoise’s Year of Fate by Yi Xiong also premiered in Locarno.

A few films from this year’s competition were shown at programs of prestigious world festivals. The Norwegian Tits by Eiving Landsvik and the Spanish-Argentinian None of That by Francisco Canton and Patricio Martinez were shown in the Cannes’ competition program, while the German Sentimental Stories by Xandra Popescu was shown in the Horizons program of the Venice Film Festival.

Observation by Christoffer Lossius, awarded with the Norwegian Amanda award for the best short film, is a story about a married couple who are informed by the kindergarten staff that their witty and creative boy is actually a problem child.

The Bulgarian Everything Tastes Strange Today by Kristina Spassovska introduces the audience to a 12-year-old girl who wants to be her older brother’s darling during an endless summer day in the privacy of their family garden.

The Swedish Container Scanning by Edvin Hallberg and Anton Hellström is a funny depiction of a world where conversations are held with no end and goal in sight, and the Polish A Dead Marriage by Michał Toczek is a story about an unusual meeting on the film set where Filip, an extra specialized in playing dead people, and Lucy, which plays a dead woman, meet.

The best film will be awarded The Golden Pram and a thousand Euros. The winners of the short film competition of the 21st Zagreb Film Festival will be decided by the jury comprising of: the Croatian director Josip Lukić (It’s Not Colf Dor Mosquitoes – Golden Pram, ZFF 2022), the Slovenian director Matjaž Ivanišin(That’s How the Summer Ended – Golden Pram, ZFF 2022), and Daniel Hadenius-Ebner, co-founder and art director of Vienna Shorts Festival.