ZagrebDox 2014

Sunday 23rd of February ZagrebDox International Documentary Festival takes off for the 10th time in the Croatian capital – in the Cineplexx, Centar Kapitol cinemas. I have been to the festival several times, from the first edition as a juror, later on as programmer of a Baltic doc retrospective and several times as part of the team of ZagrebDox Pro, the training and pitching event, where new projects are presented. Nenad Puhovski, the founder of it all, film producer/director/professor, asked me for this 10th edition to put together a programme of films that were pitched at the ”Pro”, I did so with pleasure having the chance to remember titles like ”Cinema Komunisto” (Mila Turajlic), ”Caviar Connection” (Dragan Nikolic), ”Cash and Marry” (Atanas Georgiev), ”Bird’s Way (Klara Trencsényi) and “Sevdah” (Marina Andrée Skop). Not to forget “The Cycles” (Vladimir Gojun) and “Orchestra” (Pjer Zalica). I have to say that with these films, that all have a strong creative strength, and with all the other films that I have seen during the years in Zagreb, I have learnt a lot about the region, its current status and Yugoslavia.

Nenad Puhovski, same age as me, all right to be precise, he is 2 years younger, has made a programme that will not only appeal to our generation. I am sure there will full houses for a lot of the almost 150 films to be screened. I have seen many of them but going through the titles I marked 23 that I want to see when down there – I know from experience that this will not happen but as many as possible! One of them is “Twenty Feet from Stardom” (Morgan Neville), Oscar nominated, and the one of the five I had not seen before. The festival offers its audience to watch this one and two more (“Cutie and the Boxer”, “Dirty Wars”), “The Act of Killing” was at the festival last year. Only one missing is “The Square”.

A bit more title-dropping: In the international competition you will find the Lozinski films, “Father and Son” (by the son Pawel) and “Father and Son on a Journey” (by the father Marcel), Giedre Beinoriute’s “Conversations on Serious Topics”, “Return to Homs” by Talal Derki, the amazing short by Swedish Ida Lindgren “Rings of Life”, “Stories We Tell” by Sarah Polley and “The Last Station” by Cristian Soto and Catalina Vergara. And in the regional competition go and watch “Life is almost Wonderful” by Svetoslav Draganov, the original “Velvet terrorists” by Peter Kerekes, Pavel Pekarcik and Ivan Ostrochovsky, “The Last Black Sea Pirates” by Svetoslav Stoyanov, all good films that I have seen already, whereas I am really looking forward to watch Damir Cucic “Mitch – Diary of a Schizophrenic” (photo), produced by Sinisa Juricic. I have high expectations.

Have to stop here, take a look at the website, it is going to be a fest!

Links to (some of) the films mentioned:

Cinema Komunisto: http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/1346/

Caviar Connection: http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/718/

Cash and Marry: http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/703/

Bird’s Way: http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/1056/

Sevdah: http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/829/

Cutie and the Boxer: http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/2606/

Dirty Wars: http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/2607/

Father and son: http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/1536/

Conversations on Serious Topics: http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/2337/

Return to Homs: http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/2615/

Stories We Tell: http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/2341/

Velvet Terrorists: http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/2418/

The Last Black Sea Pirates: http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/2432/

http://zagrebdox.net/en

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Tue Steen Müller
Tue Steen Müller

Müller, Tue Steen
Documentary Consultant and Critic, DENMARK

Worked with documentary films for more than 20 years at the Danish Film Board, as press officer, festival representative and film consultant/commissioner. Co-founder of Balticum Film and TV Festival, Filmkontakt Nord, Documentary of the EU and EDN (European Documentary Network).
Awards: 2004 the Danish Roos Prize for his contribution to the Danish and European documentary culture. 2006 an award for promoting Portuguese documentaries. 2014 he received the EDN Award “for an outstanding contribution to the development of the European documentary culture”. 2016 The Cross of the Knight of the Order for Merits to Lithuania. 2019 a Big Stamp at the 15th edition of ZagrebDox. 2021 receipt of the highest state decoration, Order of the Three Stars, Fourth Class, for the significant contribution to the development and promotion of Latvian documentary cinema outside Latvia. In 2022 he received an honorary award at DocsBarcelona’s 25th edition having served as organizer and programmer since the start of the festival.
From 1996 until 2005 he was the first director of EDN (European Documentary Network). From 2006 a freelance consultant and teacher in workshops like Ex Oriente, DocsBarcelona, Archidoc, Documentary Campus, Storydoc, Baltic Sea Forum, Black Sea DocStories, Caucadoc, CinéDOC Tbilisi, Docudays Kiev, Dealing With the Past Sarajevo FF as well as programme consultant for the festivals Magnificent7 in Belgrade, DOCSBarcelona, Verzio Budapest, Message2Man in St. Petersburg and DOKLeipzig. Teaches at the Zelig Documentary School in Bolzano Italy.

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