ZFF Reveals New Film Highlights

Part of the 24th Zagreb Film Festival’s lineup will include new films by contemporary masters such as Andrey Zvyagintsev, Radu Jude, and Rodrigo Sorogoyen, while festival screens will also feature star actors Olivia Colman, Alexander Skarsgård, and Javier Bardem

Zagreb film buffs will have the opportunity to watch a series of new works by some of today’s most interesting directing talent at the upcoming Zagreb Film Festival, taking place from November 9 to 15, while a strong cinematic lineup is also brought together in the always popular the Great 5 and Together Again programs.

In the Great 5 program, composed of carefully selected works from Europe’s largest national cinemas, this autumn will feature The Beloved by Spanish director Rodrigo Sorogoyen. An intense psychological study of fracture family dynamics, compared to last year’s hit Sentimental Value by Joachim Trier (ZFF 2025), it brings star actor Javier Bardem to the big screen in one of the most daring roles of his career. Bardem portrays a successful director who returns to his native Spain to shoot a new film, casting his adult daughter as an actress. The film set thus becomes an arena for personal reckonings between father and daughter whose relationship, fraught with tension after years of estrangement, reveals starkly different perspectives – perhaps completely and irreversibly irreconcilable.

The United Kingdom will be represented in the same program by the distinctive Wicker, directed by the directorial and married duo Eleanor Wilson and Alex Huston Fischer. Featuring a star-studded cast led by Olivia Colman and Alexander Skarsgård, this imaginative, fairytale-like film based on a short story by Ursula Willis-Jones follows a lonely fisherwoman subject to the spiteful comments of a medieval coastal village. Having endured ridicule for years due to her appearance, she hires a local basket weaver to make her a husband out of wicker. Through magic, the woven figure comes to life and becomes a loyal husband, gentle yet passionate, and their unconventional relationship forces the other villagers to face their own rigid traditions. Premiered at Sundance, Wicker is “full of lively personality and possessed of a rather humane outlook on our petty foibles” (The Hollywood Reporter).

The theme of marital relationships is also explored in Minotaur by the celebrated Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev (The Return, ZFF 2003 – Golden Pram; The Banishment, ZFF 2007 – Golden Pram; Elena, ZFF 2012, Loveless, ZFF 2017). Following a nine-year hiatus during which he went into exile from Russia, Zvyagintsev returns in full form, as evidenced by the Grand Prix awarded to Minotaur at Cannes. This reinterpretation of Claude Chabrol’s 1969 classis The Unfaithful Wife is set in contemporary Russia, where radical socio-political changes place enormous pressure on businessman Gleb. Even within his seemingly idyllic, luxurious home, Gleb faces trouble. His already strained relationship with his wife Galina breaks down further when Gleb suspects her of infidelity. Zvyagintsev’s sharp directorial critique of authoritarianism and patriarchy is part of ZFF’s Together Again program, which will also feature films by Lukas Dhont and Radu Jude. Diary of a Chambermaid, an unusually tender work for Jude, offers insight into the web of present-day economic exploitation. Jude’s seventh film in the ZFF lineup, following a series that included the Golden Pram winner Everybody in our Family (2012) and the Golden Bear recipient Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (2021), follows a Romanian immigrant in France working as a housekeeper for a wealthy family to support her young daughter and mother back home in Romania.

Continuing his exploration of gender identity and queer sexuality during the fragile period of adolescence and youth, Belgian director Lukas Dhont (Close, ZFF 2022) sets his new film Coward in history, at a time when World War I was raging. The two protagonists, newly conscripted young men, meet on the Western Front, where they run a theatre troupe tasked with entertaining soldiers. The lead acting duo, Emmanuel Macchia and Valentin Campagne, were awarded in the official competition at Cannes for their roles in this film about an unexpected love that blossoms amidst the horror of war.

For its youngest audience, ZFF has prepared a selection of five titles brought together in the KinoKino program, one of which will be awarded a prize by the children’s jury. Among them is a Cannes laureate, the French feature Iron Boy directed by former Pixar animator Louis Clichy, known for animation classics such as WALL-E (2009) and Up (2009). This hand-painted film, in which the everyday and the wondrous intertwine, was awarded the Special Jury Prize in the Un Certain Regard section. Meanwhile, Atlas of the Universe, by renowned Romanian director Paul Negoescu, comes with a Special Mention from the Berlinale’s Generation Kplus program, following a young boy who embarks on an unexpected journey into unknown realms over a single shoe. Young viewers will undoubtedly also be charmed by the fairytale adventure Lampje about a fearless lighthouse keeper’s daughter, by Dutch director Margien Rogaar, as well as Natascha Beller’s Splish Splash Forever! About two young girls who join forces to save their favourite place in the world – a local outdoor pool. Important contemporary social topics such as homelessness, poverty, and psychological vulnerability are addressed in King of the Wanderers by Dutch director Janne Schmidt, which centres on a girl who discovers her father’s entirely different, vivid world. At the upcoming ZFF, KinoKIno will also announce its new season, so the abovementioned titles will be available for viewing in the months to come at cinemas across Croatia at the special KinoKino program screenings.

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The Zagreb Film Festival is held with the support of the City Office for Cultural and Civil Society, the Croatian Audiovisual Centre, Creative Europe – MEDIA Sub-programme, the Kultura Nova Foundation, and the Zagreb Tourist Board.