The 14th ZFF Begins Today: 33 Films in the Golden Pram Run!

On Saturday, 12 November, the 14th edition of Zagreb Film Festival begins at Europa Cinema with an opening ceremony and a screening of the Finnish Oscar candidate, The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki. At the opening, the audience will be greeted by the director of this heart-warming tale of love and boxing, Juho Kuosmanen, and actress Oona Airola, starring as Raija, the women who almost made the Finnish national boxing champion Olli Mäki late for the world championship.

Next to the guests already mentioned, the opening will be attended by celebrities from neighbouring countries, actors Slavko Štimac, Bogdan Diklić and Hana Selimović, and director Srđa Penezić to present the screening of Name: Dobrica, Las Name: Unknown. The Croatian premiere of the film, which uses the protagonists trials and tribulations to reminds us of the importance of good deeds, on Sunday at 7pm, will be the first ever inclusive screening at ZFF, adapted for the blind and visually impaired persons and deaf and hard of hearing persons.

In the nine days of the festival, from Saturday to next Sunday (12-20 November) at the best European cinema – Europa – and Tuškanac and other four locations across Zagreb, the 14th edition of Zagreb Film Festival will take place. For its 14th birthday the festival has prepared over 100 films and the most diverse line-up ever in terms of genre and theme. Therefore, it is not surprising that, as this year’s festival visuals confirm, the event will be attended by monumental urban legends of different profiles, as well as over 150 guests from all over the world.

Aside from the already mentioned film crews, ZFF will also be attended by teams that worked on other films in the main selection: on Monday, the directors of Liberation of Skopje, Danilo and Rade Šerbedžija and actress Lucija Šerbedžija, composer Vlatko Stefanovski and producers Igor A. Nola and Goran Tozija. On Tuesday we will be hanging out with the cast and crew of Quit Staring at My Plate: director Hana Jušić, cast members Mia Petričević, Arijana Čulina, Nikša Butijer, Zlatko Burić – Kićo, producer Ankica Jurić Tilić and others. On Thursday, we will be joined by Morgan Simon, the director of A Taste of Ink and the Trampoline team, led by director Katarina Zrinka Matijević, and on Friday by actors Ekaterina Japaridze and Branko Đurić of House of Others, the film’s producer Dario Domitrović, and Israeli director Maysaloun Hamoud, presenting her film In Between.

The closing will also be an interesting event, on Saturday at 8pm with a screening of David Cronenberg’s Crash, attended by DoP Peter Suschitzky and the leading actress from this iconic film which is celebrating its 20th birthday this year, Deborah Kara Unger. The INDUSTRY section is hosting Tony Grisoni, the co-writer of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and HBO’s serial The Young Pope, teaching a masterclass on Saturday, 19 November. High representatives of many European and global film agencies and authorities will be arriving in Zagreb for the special event called This Is How WE Do It, on 17 November, celebrating the 25th anniversary of the MEDIA Sub-programme and Canada’s accession to Eurimages.

Thirty-three film are running for the Golden Pram award (13 features, 10 shorts and 10 in Checkers), and the finest entry in the Together Again section will take a ride on the Golden Bicycle.