Nenad Puhovski: ZagrebDox 2025

Foreword to the festival catalogue:

With all the explosions, sirens howling, cries and
fights pervading our small endangered planet, all I
can hear is – silence.
The silence of intelligence, reason, dialogue and –
humanity.
The world is dominated by bullies, some new ‘gold’
defines the price of human lives and the future
of entire nations, tens of thousands of people die
every day on fronts and beyond, and hundreds of
thousands of those who thought would be safer if
they fled such a fate were stopped on their way to
a life they believed to be better and safer.
Greed, stupidity and primitivism become the main
‘ingredients’ not only of politics, but also of our
destinies. I belong to the generation popularly called
‘boomers’. Conceived in the world of post-war
optimism, we probably genetically acquired that
essential ingredient of human existence – hope.
However, is there hope today for – hope?
This is the question I ask myself on a daily basis,
thinking primarily about those with the burden
of future on their shoulders – our children and
grandchildren.
There has to be!
Even if we make it up, temporarily.
“Neither for glory, nor for the cash,” that’s my
answer when I’m asked why I’ve been doing this
job for the past 30 years; in fact, my whole life.
I simply feel we need to try, if not give sense, if not
improve the world, then at least comprehend what
is really happening.
ZagrebDox sprang from one such necessity. It is
probably idealistic, ambitious, unrealistic…? Does it
make sense at all?
Only you, our audience, can answer this question.
Over 350,000 of you have already travelled with
us over the past 20 years, so I sincerely believe the
same will happen this year, too.
Out of over 1,500 film titles we saw for this year’s
festival, we selected around a hundred of them.
They are not always an easy watch. Besides, there
is reality TV for that…
We are here to illustrate how the finest
international filmmakers of all generations,
nationalities and ‘signatures’ see the world we live
in. The real reality.
And to talk about that after the screening. And in
that talk, in this exchange of thoughts and ideas, to
try to find – hope.
Nenad Puhovski,
founder and art director of ZagrebDox