The Industry program, a platform of the Zagreb Film Festival aimed at film professionals and all interested parties who want to know more about the processes of audio-visual work production, will be held online this year during the seven festival days and with the help of HUB385, our partner.

This year, with other educational and practical content, the Industry program includes five interesting lectures which cover a wide array of topics, from insight into the creative methods of one of the most renowned European modern directors of today, Radu Jude, to the lecture of American script doctor Bobette Buster, who will reveal to us what is behind our love for certain films, all up to the masterclass about designing a monster in videogames, which will be held by Cornelia Geppert, the creative director of a successful German studio Jo-Mei Games.

Romanian director, Radu Jude, will give a lecture about the similarities and differences of his methods with fiction and documentary films, starting from his statement how he never found his own film style, nor will he ever find it. The lecture will be moderated by Igor Bezinović and it is brought to you by ZFF in cooperation with Restart. In the Together Again program, the audience will have the opportunity to see Jude’s latest film, Upper Case Print, a film which delves deep into the archives of Ceauşescu’s regime.

The Uses of Wonder: How Cinema Changes the World is the name of the lecture by American script doctor Bobette Buster, organized by ZFF in cooperation with the Croatian Screenwriters and Playwrights Guild (SPID). In the two-hour lecture, Bobette Buster will show us excerpts from film classics and analyse how directors build a relationship with the audience by using universal principles of film language, and how by asking the right question they make the audience fall in love with their characters.

Industry’s permanent focus on the potential and possible avenues of development of video games will culminate this year in two lectures dedicated to this growing branch of audio-visual art through topics of loneliness in video games and the possibilities of European co-productions.

Cornelia Geppert will hold a masterclass called: Video games: Monster Design Based on Human Emotions in which she’ll present the game Sea of Solitude about the fight with inner monsters and overcoming loneliness. As a very personal project by Geppert and her studio Jo-Mei, the game focuses on mental health problems and Sea of Solitude follows the premise that people turn into monsters once they become too lonely.

Thierry Baujard, the European Commission’s expert for financing the culture and creative sector and for inter-sector financing and the co-founder of SpielFabrique, a Franco-German videogame accelerator, will hold a lecture called Games Without Borders: European Co-Productions about the increase in European countries of government subsidies for the production of videogames. France and Germany have already started the process and many countries are joining them, and the topic will cover possible ways for Croatia to be a part of that model

After the lecture, there will be a short panel about the possibilities of Croatian videogame industry’s participation in European co-productions.  The panel will be moderated by Srđan Laterza, and Thierry Baujard (SpielFabrique), Andrej Levenski (Croatian Game Developers Association), Chris Marcich (HAVC director), and Davor Švarić (Academy of Drama Arts). The events following the videogames segment were realized within the framework of DigiTelling project in cooperation with the French Institute in Croatia and Goethe-Institut Kroatien.

Television storytelling and the development of drama television projects on the international market are the topics will be hearing about from experienced screenwriters and producers Helene Granqvist and Valerija Richter, brought to you by CED – Media Office Croatia and Serbia.

Important segment in the film production cycle, from script development, TV project preparation, co-production possibilities, to project packaging, are in the permanent focus of Industry, and this year it will also feature a panel discussion about the challenges in audio-visual arts during the COVID-19 pandemic, organized in cooperation with the European Parliament Office in Croatia and CED – Media Office Croatia.

Masterclass lectures within the Industry program are open for public and can be watched via online streaming on the official page of Zagreb Film Festival www.zff.hr and on social networks.