Croatian Premiere of Tuesday by Daina Oniunas-Pusić and Cannes Winner Nebojša Slijepčević at Pula Film Festival
Films by two currently most prominent Croatian directors will be screened on the closing evening at Pula Film Festival. The first one is the Croatian premiere of Tuesday, the first feature film by the Croatian director based in London, Daina Oniunas-Pusić, which recently had its world premiere in New York to great reviews, and the second film that will be screened at the Arena is Nebojša Slijepčević’s The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent, which recently won the Palme d’Or at Cannes. Both films will be screened in the PoPular Pula Programme, among other attractive films in the same programme and the programmes Time Machine and Greater Adria, which are sure to attract a large audience to the 71st edition of Pula Film Festival, running from 11 to 18 July. The programmes include Kinds of Kindness by Yorgos Lanthimos with Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons, as well as Demi Moore’s comeback film Substance, directed by Coralie Fargeat, and the world premiere of the restored classic Kaya, I’ll Kill You, directed by Vatroslav Mimica.
POPULAR PULA – FILM HITS AT THE MAGICAL ARENA
PoPular Pula is a programme reserved for authorial and regional hits at the Arena, and this year it has eight films.
The closing evening of the Festival will see the screening of the feature debut by Daina Oniunas-Pusić, the fantasy drama Tuesday (2023) with Julia Louis-Dreyfus, widely known as Elaine from Seinfeld, as the mother. Lola Petticrew plays the teenager, and will be coming to Pula Film Festival, as well as the director. The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent, directed by Nebojša Slijepčević, which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, will also be screened on the same evening.
PoPular Pula also includes the new film by Yorgos Lanthimos, the dark comedy Kinds of Kindness. The Greek director once again worked with Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe, and Margaret Qualley from Poor Things (2023).
Other films include Substance (2024), directed by Coralie Fargeat (Revenge, 2017), a feminist satire of Hollywood’s obsession with youth, starring Demi Moore; Fly Me to the Moon (2024), directed by Greg Berlanti (Love, Simon, 2018), an American romantic comedy with Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum about the 1960s space race between the US and the Soviet Union; and the new adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo (2024), directed by Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de La Patellière, starring Pierre Niney.
The programme also includes the adventure disaster film about storm chasers, Twisters (2024), directed by Oscar nominee Lee Isaac Chung (Minari, 2020), starring Daisy Edgar-Jones (Normal People, 2020) and Glen Powell (Anyone but You, 2023); and the new chapter of Despicable Me, the fourth film of the biggest global franchise, Despicable Me 4 (2024), directed by Chris Renaud and Patrick Delage, with the Croatian voices of Rene Bitorajac, Hana Hegedušić and other Croatian actors.
The international programme Greater Adria presents six films. The winner of this year’s ZagrebDOX, the documentary film Four Daughters (2023), directed by Kaouther Ben Hania, is a story of the radicalisation of two Tunisian girls who left their family and joined the notorious Islamic State.
Monster (2023), directed by Cannes winner Hirokazu Kore-eda (Shoplifters, 2018, Broker, 2022) is a Rashomon-style thriller drama.
The controversial social satire Veni Vidi Vici (2024) by the Austrian directorial duo Julia Niemann and Daniel Hoesl, shows the world of the untouchable super-rich, whose enormous wealth and influence allows them to do as they please.
The Spanish political thriller Artificial Justice (2024), directed by Simón Casal, takes us to the near future in which the government wants to replace judges with AI software. Artificial Justice will have its Croatian premiere at Pula Film Festival.
The programme also includes the film La Chimera (2023), directed by Alice Rohrwacher, the leading figure of Italian auteur film (Heavenly Body, 2011, The Wonders, 2014, and Happy as Lazaro, 2018) about an unusual band of thieves of ancient Etruscan tombs in the 1980s; and the film Solitude (2023), a feature debut by director Ninna Pálmadóttir about solitude and human connection, written by Rúnar Rúnarsson.
The films in the Greater Adria Programme will compete for the Award of the Croatian Independent Cinemas Network, presented to the best film chosen by representatives of independent cinemas. Awarded films will receive prizes an incentive to future film distribution in the form of ensuring advertising space and a minimal number of cinemas in the first week of distribution. The Festival is aiming to contribute to quality communication and cooperation between cinemas and distributers, and be the concrete example of impacting further positive practices in film distribution.
The Time Machine Programme includes two new Croatian films: The House in Kraljevec (2023), a documentary by Pero Kvesić (1950-2023) about the history of his Zagreb home, and the documentary film Woods That Sing (2024) by Renata Poljak, formed around four main stories combining visually impressive segments with the testimonies of female partisans. The production of The House in Kraljevec was done by Factum, and the film was completed by co-writer and editor Vesna Biljan and producer Nenad Puhovski due to the director’s illness. Woods That Sing was produced by Documenta – Centre for Dealing with the Past and Kinematograf.
In the Time Machine Programme, we will also remember the classics of domestic film history: Rajko Grlić’s feature debut Whichever Way the Ball Bounces, and Zdravo Velimirović’s The Dervish and Death, based on the novel by Meša Selimović, which was recently restored by the Yugoslav Film Archive and A1 Serbia. Both films were screened at Pula Film Festival in 1974, and Grlić won the Jury Diploma, and The Dervish and Death won four Golden Arenas and the Grand Silver Arena.
The programme also includes the restored gem of Yugoslav film from 1972, the satire Life of a Shock Force Worker, directed by Bahrudin Bato Čengić, which many rank as the very best of the Black Wave. The digitally restored film (Slovenian Cinematheque, Film Centre Sarajevo, Croatian State Archives – Croatian Cinematheque, and Österreichische Filmmuseum) had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival in 2023, and was nominated for Best Restored Film.
The programme also includes the world premiere of the restored version of Kaya, I’ll Kill You!, one of Vatroslav Mimica’s most memorable films from 1967, recognised as an outstanding achievement of European modern film. The new edition of Words Behind Images – Reproduction of Storyboards of Croatian Film Classics from the Collection of Croatian Film Archives will be presented at the Festival, as well as the original storyboard of Mimica’s treatise on human nature and evil, providing an insight into the author’s creative process through numerous interventions, illustrations, and collages in the storyboard.
The complete programme and schedule of the 71st Pula Film Festival is available at pulafilmfestival.hr
