The third edition of the pitching programme Script Your Hit, aimed at projects in the phase of development that successfully combine authorial and commercial sensibilities, will also include a workshop for screenplay development. The workshop is organised in cooperation with the Croatian Screenwriters and Playwrights Guild (SPID), and will be held in three modules (online in early May, in Zagreb in early June, and during the Festival). This programme was initiated to meet the need for projects that are equally attractive to festival, niche, and wider audiences. Applications for the pitching were open exclusively to Croatian majority productions with focus on comedy, biographical, and children’s film genres that have not yet received approval for production funds from the Croatian Audiovisual Centre or other film funds. The selected applicants will be invited to participate in a preparation workshop for the pitching under the mentorship of producer Vanja Jambrović, and will go on to present their projects to a three-member jury. The best project will receive a prize of 10,000 EUR from the Croatian Audiovisual Centre and the distribution company Blitz.
WORKSHOP MENTORS: Vinko Brešan, Ljubica Luković, Mitja Okorn
MENTOR FOR PITCHING PREPARATION: Vanja Jambrović
Vinko Brešan
Vinko Brešan was born in Zagreb in 1964. His debut, low-budget feature How the War Started on My Island is the highest-grossing film in Croatia after independence. His films Marshal Tito’s Spirit and Witnesses received awards at festivals in Berlin and Karlovy Vary, and his fourth film Will Not Stop There won the FIPRESCI Prize at Karlovy Vary. The film The Priest’s Children is the most watched Croatian film in the 21st century, and was nominated for Best Comedy by the European Film Academy. The TV series Diary of the Great Perica, which he co-wrote and directed, won the Heart of Sarajevo for Best Comedy TV Series and the Heart of Europe for Best TV Series of Eastern Europe in 2021. He also directs for the theatre.
Ljubica Luković
Ljubica Luković is a Cologne based writer from Serbia. She graduated in dramaturgy from the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade, and earned her master’s degree in serial storytelling from IFS in Cologne. The series Awake, which she co-authored, premiered at Canneseries in 2021, where it won the Audience Award. Her debut feature, How I Learned to Fly, premiered in February 2022 and went straight to the top of the domestic box office with an audience of more than 230,000. She also wrote for the series Blok 27 and Apsolutnih 100, and is currently developing film and series projects for several European markets.
Mitja Okorn
Mitja Okorn is a director of numerous award-winning commercials, music videos and feature films. In 2004 his debut feature film Here and There became a major hit in his home country of Slovenia. In 2008 he received the British Council’s International Young Film Entrepreneur of the Year Award (IYFEY). In the same year he directed the wildly popular TV series 39 and a Half for Polish network TVN and later, the hit romantic comedy Letters to Santa. His third film, Planet Single, was released in 2016 to critical acclaim and broke attendance records during its second week of release. In addition to his feature film work, Mitja has directed over 30 music videos. In 2020 Mitja directed the feature film Life In A Year starring Jaden Smith, Cara Delevingne & Cuba Gooding Jr. Shortly after, he made his producing debut with Netflix’s All My Friends Are Dead, written and directed by his long-time assistant Jan Belcl. Both films have had successful worldwide releases. In 2024, Mitja directed another Netflix film, a sports drama called Boxer which he co-wrote with Ivan Bezmarević and Lucas Coleman.
Vanja Jambrović
Vanja Jambrović graduated in Comparative Literature and Philosophy from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb and in production from the Academy of Dramatic Art in Zagreb. Since 2009, she has worked as producer at Restart, an association specialised in documentary film. The documentary films she produced have won more than 150 awards at international film festivals and were preselected for the European Film Award twice (Valerija, 2024, and Srbenka, 2019). Srbenka has won a total of 23 awards at film festivals, including the Doc Alliance Award. Her films have won the Heart of Sarajevo for Best Documentary Film three times (Valerija, directed by Sara Jurinčić in 2024, Museum of the Revolution, directed by Srđan Keča in 2022, and Srbenka, directed by Nebojša Slijepčević in 2018). She was a part of international workshops for film producers at Cannes, Jihlava, and Eurodoc, teaches two courses at the Academy of Dramatic Art in Zagreb, and since 2022, she has been a mentor at the international workshop for developing feature
length documentary films for the international market, Documentary Campus Masterschool from Germany. She was a guest lecturer at international documentary film workshops such as Ex Oriente, BDC Discoveries, and Circle Women Doc Accelerator.
VALLI CINEMA
TUESDAY, 15 JULY AT 10 a.m.
LANGUAGE: English
JURY: Ivan Maloča, Miloš Pušić, Vladimir Gojun
Vladimir Gojun
Vladimir Gojun is an award-winning editor of feature films, documentaries, short and experimental films and TV series. His works have been presented and won awards at the world’s largest festivals including the Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Karlovy Vary, Tribeca, Sarajevo, etc. He has also directed four documentaries. Among his works are Buick Riviera, Houston, We Have a Problem!, Men Don’t Cry, Murina, Little Trouble Girls, Steel Mill Caffe, Blum, I Know Your Soul, The Diary of the Great Perica, Yellow Moon, Breath, The Real Truth about the Fight, etc. He works as an associate professor at the Department of Editing at the Academy of Dramatic Art in Zagreb and as a consultant and supervisor for editing feature and documentary films, holding editing workshops and masterclasses. He has been a long-time selector of the Croatian short film programme Kockice at the Zagreb Film Festival. He is one of the founders and the president of the Croatian Film Editors Association.
Miloš Pušić
Miloš Pušić graduated in directing from the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad, where he still works as an Assistant Professor and teacher acting for the camera and directing. He is a director and producer and has so far directed three feature films – Autumn in My Street (2009), Withering (2013) and Working Class Heroes (2022) which premiered in the Berlinale Panorama Programme. The film won several awards, including the Grand Prix at the Andrei Tarkovsky Zerkalo Film Festival in Russia. Miloš also produced two films by Marko Đorđević – My Morning Laughter (2019), which had its premiere at the IFF Rotterdam Programme, and then won the Grand Prix at the Belgrade Author Film Festival and That’s It for Now (2024) – which was voted the best Serbian film at FEST 2024 and has been one of the most watched films in cinemas in Serbia. He is a member of the Association DOKSerbia, the Association of Film Directors and the Association of Film Producers of Serbia.
Ivan Maloča
Ivan Maloča (b. 1962, Knin, Croatia) is a prominent film producer and founder of the production company Interfilm (est. 1990). He has produced nearly forty feature films, including acclaimed titles such as Marshal Tito’s Spirit, Witnesses, The Priest’s Children, On the Other Side, and The Constitution. His body of work also includes over a hundred commissioned films, numerous documentaries and series (Hebrang, CSI Croatia, The Silenced Voice), and several successful TV shows (Black-and-White World, Mrkomir The First).
Maloča is a four-time winner of the Grand Golden Arena for Best Film and holds six Golden Gates of Pula, among other honors. In 2016, he received the Albert Kapović Award for outstanding contribution to Croatian cinema. A member of the European Film Academy and Croatian Association of Film Workers, he is also a co-founder of key national producers’ associations and teaches at VERN’ University.
PROJECTS
ONCE UPON A TIME IN DALMATIA, Ante Marin
On a Dalmatian island where every corner has been turned into a hotel, the remaining piece of freedom is guarded by a wild camp and a neighbouring beach bar, in eternal conflict over loud music and a shared toilet. The status quo is disrupted by the arrival of a young romance novelist under the pseudonym Dragica Avalon, who is looking for inspiration for a new, “real” novel that he will finally sign under his own name. And as the last days of summer fly by, in the collision of the seaside idyll and concrete reality, a Mediterranean comedy about love, writing, and octopus salad is born.
Ante Marin (Split, 1985) is a Croatian screenwriter and director. He is one of the founders, teaching coordinator, and lecturer at the Palunko Screenwriting School of the Croatian Film Association. He is a member of Blank_filmski inkubator, Kino Klub Split, and the Croatian Screenwriters and Playwrights Guild. After a number of short films, he made his writing and directorial debut with the film Južina. He won the Social Innovation Award of the National Foundation for Civil Society Development, and a number of special acknowledgments for volunteer contributions.
A WONDERFUL LIFE, Nikolina Bogdanović, Miljenka Čogelja
A Wonderful Life is a biographical film about the two lives of Jovanka Broz, the First Lady of Yugoslavia. Combining historical facts with elements of fiction, the film portrays a complex woman in complex time, intertwining two major chapters of her life: a “wonderful life” alongside Tito and the thirty years of isolation, humiliation and oblivion that followed his death.
Nikolina Bogdanović is a screenwriter and dramaturge. Sha has done several collaborations on film and TV projects, including the films Good Children and Pelican. Miljenka Čogelja is a producer and founder of Pipser, a member of EAVE, ACE and the European Film Academy. Nikolina is the producer of the multi-award-winning film Safe Place and numerous documentaries.
BEST DUDE IN MY HOOD, Ivan Turković-Krnjak
Boško is the neighbourhood postman and everyone loves him. As he rides his little yellow moped, stopping from mailbox to mailbox, he is greeted with equal joy by animals and people, children and adults, “Purgers” and Roma. If you are sad, he will tell you a joke, if your leg hurts (or you are just old) he will go to the grocery store for you, if your dog has strayed, he will probably find it. And if it gets really bad, he will read a lower electricity consumption off your meter. Boško really is the best guy.
Ivan Turković-Krnjak (Zagreb, 1988), graduated Dramaturgy from the Academy of Dramatic Art in Zagreb and works as a screenwriter on film and TV projects.
WILD CARD, Nikola Kuprešanin
Goran Ivanišević, at the bottom of his career, with an injured shoulder and written off by everyone, enters Wimbledon in 2002 via a wildcard invitation. Against all expectations, he reached the finals, where he missed three match points against Patrick Rafter. Each of them tells one of the key episodes of his past: three lost Wimbledon finals in the 1990s, war traumas, his sister’s cancer and career decline. In the fourth match, Rafter’s return ends in the net. The entire world is engulfed in an unprecedented euphoria. In the words of the author of the original text, Boris Dežulović: “sometimes, your own dream comes true before someone else’s eyes, and you never fall asleep again.
Nikola Kuprešanin (Split, 1983) is a Croatian screenwriter, director and journalist. Co-writer of Danis Tanović’s Not So Friendly Neighbourhood Affair and My Late Summer and the award-winning series The Hollow (6 Heart of Sarajevo Awards in 2023, including the Best Screenplay Award). Nikola is the co-director of the documentary series Kurds and Hackers of War. He reported from Syria and Iraq for SRF. He is a winner of numerous awards, including awards for literature and journalism.
VHS CLUB, Daria Stilin
Three seventh graders from Zagreb in 2027 are punished with the task of digitising old VHS tapes, but one mysterious cassette sends them back to their school in 1997. There, they meet their own parents as teenagers and get caught up in a plan to sabotage the school talent show – an event that will shape their strict future headteacher. To return home, they must save the show and discover what true connection means. VHS CLUB is a warm and nostalgic story about bullying, growing up, empathy, and the lasting effects of childhood wounds, as well as the idea that small choices can change the future.
Daria Stilin is a screenwriter and director with degrees in Film Dramaturgy and Business Economics. She wrote and directed two short fiction films, Toast (2018) and Codfish (2020). She attended a number of noted workshops with her TV series and feature film projects in development: TorinoFilmLab TV Series – Extended, Script station within Talents Sarajevo, CineLink Drama, My First Script at ZFF, Branko Bauer screenwriting program within Croatian Film Directors’ Guild, etc. With her TV series projects Dream Hackers and The Splitting she won first place (2019) and second place (2020) at the New Europe Market (NEM Zagreb) Screenwriting competition. She has worked at Nova TV, wrote for The Highlands (Antitalent, HRT), and is now developing a TV series with Antitalent and Big Light.
WHAT BIG EYES YOU HAVE!, Rona Žulj, Dino Krpan
On a sleepy Adriatic Island, naive twelve-year-old Mia meets her Internet idols – scientist and influencer Monica, and philanthropist and billionaire Mr. Wolf. With the help of Oswald, the talking puff, she uncovers their sinister plan. “What big eyes you have!” is an exciting 3D animated story about courage, coming of age and saving the world from greed and destruction.
Rona Žulj (Zagreb, 1985) graduated in dramaturgy from the Academy of Dramatic Art in Zagreb. Rona works as a playwright and writer on contemporary theatre productions. She is a co-founder of the independent theatre collective Rebel. She writes plays, prose and screenplays. In 2023, she won the Golden Arena award for best Croatian screenplay for the animated film Cricket and Antoinette. Dino Krpan (Zagreb, 1969) graduated in design from the University of Zagreb. His debut animated film Alea iacta est (2006) won several international awards. In addition to working on three short, animated films and the new season of the series Professor Baltazar, he participated as a producer and co-director in Cricket and Antoinette, the first Croatian feature 3D animated film.
