From Copenhagen to Zagreb
I still have some films that I would like to watch from the CPH:DOX festival program but I will catch up with some of them. I was in the position that I had seen all films in the main program, all but two, the ones which were awarded (!), the Chinese “Always” and the American “Flophouse America”! I saw “Always” after it was prized and it deserved an award, but maybe not the main one; I would have chosen “My Dear Théo” by Ukrainian Alisa Kovalenko or Portuguese Ico Costa’s “Balane 3” from Mocambique.
Monday afternoon I arrived to ZagrebDox, edition number 21. Nice to be back at a festival that I like very much as I have done since it started 21 years ago, where founder and artistic director Nenad Puhovski asked me to be a juror for the first edition, where Pirjo Honkasalo won the main prize for her “Three Rooms of Melancholia”.
Now I was invited to be part of a mentor team of four to cope with 8 projects from different countries. Mentors were Croatian Oscar nominated Nebosja Slijejcevic, sales agent Ana Fernandez Saiz, producer Ieva Ubele from Latvia and me – steered by Robert Zuber, director, producer, teacher and festival director of Rab Film Festival in Croatia, and the man behind a new training format called Slow Pitch. In brief the concept is that there is a plenary in the morning with a talk about pitching followed by two hours of meetings between the mentors and two of the 8 projects. Meetings that take place somewhere in the city. Today I was with two young female directors at the Museum of contemporary Art in New Zagreb on the other side of the Sava, we talked about their projects for a couple of hours – yesterday I was with two male directors, one from Bulgaria, one from Estonia in an old hippie place, great for a talk and a coffee and a lhosa… if you know, what that is. The one taking us to the places, production assistant she is called but she is also a film director, is Melita Mukavec, a perfect guide who also took part in the discussions.
The festival… I will quote festival director Nenad Puhovski in a separate post – has it all, film-wise. An international competition with above mentioned “My Dear Théo” by Alisa Kovalenko, “A Year in a Life of a Country” by Tomasz Wolski, who had a fine masterclass yesterday on his work with archive, Danish Birgitte Stærmose is here with magnificent “Afterwar” from Kosovo – all films written about on this site. In the regional competition there is a new film by Petra Seliskar, “My Summer Holiday”, Peter Kerekes is there with “Wishing on a Star” and “The Loudest Silence” by Aleksandar Reljic from Serbia. The latter was the opening film putting a focus on the huge anti-government protests in neighbouring Serbia. I hope Reljic will continue filming to make a longer film on this strong manifestation led by the students.
As you can see from the drawing by Catalan Martina Rogers I am happy to be here to help as good as i can.
