Anticipating the Finale of Pula Film Festival!
The day before the big decision on the award-winners of Pula Film Festival was quite eventful. The second pitching programme in Pula PRO, Screenplay of a Blockbuster, took place, director Mitja Okorn gave a lecture on his journey to success, the winners of the Nikola Tanhofer were announced, and we report on the conversations with the films crews of the films Sandbag Dam, directed by Čejen Černić Čanak, All Operators Are Currently Unavailable, directed by Dalibor Barić, and Vuk Ršumović’s new film Dwelling Among the Gods. You can also check the audience’s and critics’ scores for the films. We invite you to the presentation of awards in the Pula PRO programme at the Festival Centre on Wednesday, and later to the award ceremony for the Golden Arenas at the Istrian National Theatre. You can watch the world premiere of the documentary film The Lost Dream Team, directed by Jure Pavlović at the Arena at 9.15 p.m., and give an applause to the award-winners who will take a bow to the audience before the screening.
Presenting the awards for Pula PRO and the award ceremony for the Golden Arenas
Awards in the Pula PRO programme will be presented to the best projects in the pitching programmes Make the Scene – Comedy Edition, Screenplay of a Blockbuster and Work in Progress at the Festival Centre at 6 p.m. The award of the Croatian Independent Cinemas Network will also be presented to the best Croatian film and to the best film in the Greater Adria programme.
The award ceremony for the Golden Arenas will be held at the Istrian National Theatre at 6.30 p.m., and will include the Arena for Best Film in the new Regional Programme. Following. the ceremony, the award-winners will go to the Arena to take a bow to the audience, who will then see the world premiere of Jure Pavlović’s documentary film The Lost Dream Team.
From 8.05 p.m., HRT3 will be broadcasting live from Pula, and will later show the award ceremony of Pula Film Festival.
Pula Film Forum: Mitja Okorn – Work Hard Mindset
From his home country of Slovenia, through his success in Poland and all the way to Hollywood and working with actors such as Jaden Smith and Cara Delevigne, director Mitja Okorn spoke at Pula Film Forum to David Uranjek about his professional journey and the importance of complete dedication and sacrifices. When he first started out, he didn’t have the Internet, a camera, financial funds, not even knowledge, he said. He was a skater and punker, he loved music and that is how he started: “I filmed my skater friends on my father’s camcorder and edited the music. I was so thrilled to make each beat right that there was simply no other option but go down that path,” he said. He later wrote a screenplay and shot the film with his friends, but Slovenian institutions denied them funding. As he didn’t succeed in Slovenia, he came to Poland by chance and by accident. “I was so contentious and disrespectful, but it was this attitude that helped me realise my dreams. Diligence was the guiding star of my success,” he said and added that he has always seen rejection as opportunity. I really do believe that when one door closes, another 100 open. Confidence and the can-do attitude brought me to Hollywood. It is important not to show you haven’t succeeded and that you don’t have any money. Your mindset has to be that they need you and not vice versa,” said Okorn.
He said he wrote 200 or more pitch screenplays in America, “of which five would be edited, and none shot.” Still, one did find its way to the screen – Life in a Year, a 2020 romantic drama with Jaden Smith and Cara Delevigne, produced by Columbia Pictures. He stood up to Will Smith, the famous actor and Jaden’s Smith father, in this project: “I didn’t allow him to interfere. He recognised it and appreciated it. It was difficult to have the Slovenian attitude, Polish craft, and American production. Mrs Smith liked me a lot and so I had room to do what I thought was the right thing to do.”
Okorn also gave some advice to young professionals. “Learn how to use AI. Stick to your opinions, and don’t change for anybody, whoever’s last name that person might have. Don’t get upset when you’re rejected, because other opportunities will come. This industry is one of difficult egos and acknowledgments, it’s hard to remain normal. You need to stay calm and be yourself.”
Conversation with the film crew: All Operators Are Currently Unavailable
The new animated film by Dalibor Barić, All Operators Are Currently Unavailable, is a psychological thriller and a satire about the simulated ‘cinematic’ holiday resort where guests play pre-written roles, and the screenwriters – the operators – create their stories on a daily basis. The film had its world premiere at the 72nd Pula Film Festival, and the day after the premiere, Biško Picula spoke to the director, sound designer Leonard Klaić, and Ivan Starčević, Matea Majerle, and Anđelko Jurkas, who gave the characters voices to bring them to life.
Barić revealed that he wrote the screenplay for the Operators 10 years ago, but only now had the chance to make an experimental film of this nature. “All my films have this type of narrative. Animation provides a cut between two shots that you can’t see, and that allowed me to use various techniques,” he explained.
Actresses Majerle and Starčević spoke about the process of synchronisation. “Croatia doesn’t have many animated films that require synchronisation. The experience of creating a character with your voice is invaluable. You don’t copy the voice from the existing one,” said Starčević. Director and screenwriter Anđelko Jurkas gave his voice to a villain in the Operators. “Barić accepted my notes, and we just connected. The vision came from Barić, and the implementation was a joint effort,” he said. Klaić spoke about designing the sound from scratch. “We didn’t have a single sound. Doing it that way, it either turns out bad or it turns out great. It is the most difficult, but the most beautiful job,” he concluded.
Conversation with the film crew: Dwelling Among the Gods
Based on true events, the Croatian minority co-production Dwelling Among the Gods, directed by Vuk Ršumović, tells the story of a young Afghan woman who comes to Belgrade at the height of the migrant wave. Her struggles begin when she learns that her younger brother drowned there and she goes into battle to give him a proper funeral. Ljubo Lasić spoke to Ršumović, producer Mirko Bojović, and director of photography Damjan Radovanović about the film. “It is a story about the search for dignity and justice, told from a refugee’s perspective,” said Ršumović. Lead actress Fereshteh Hosseini, he emphasised, plays the role that carries the whole film: “Our task was to gain her trust, and the rest just happened naturally.” The language barrier was their biggest obstacle, as the film is in Farsi, so it was a challenge to bring together the two different cultures, traditions, and identities. It was very demanding on actor Nikola Ristanovski, he added, to learn the language in a short period of time so that he could play the interpreter in the film. Radovanović said that the film, even though it is a fiction film, is shot in the cinema vérité style, without too much explaining, and with deep empathy. “This was a chance to show Belgrade as we see it and as the refugees see it,” he clarified.
Conversation with the film crew: Sandbag Dam
Following its world premiere in the Generation official selection at Berlin, the drama Sandbag Dam, directed by Čejen Černić Čanak, was screened at the Arena in the main programme. Boško Picula spoke to the director, actors Lav Novosel, Andrija Žunac, Leon Grgić, and actress Franka Mikolaci. The film tells the story of forbidden love between two young men, who are trying to make sense of their feelings at the time of year when rivers threaten to spill over. Two anticipations intertwine – what will happen in nature and what will happen in society. “I felt from the start that I have to be close to the characters and that the audience has to be in love with them and their mindsets,” said Černić Čanak.
She revealed the problems they faced in casting, as the theme is not that present in Croatian film, and added that many actors turned down working on this project. Žunac, who plays Slaven in the film, described his experience working on his character: “Slaven is someone who’s cast out by society and his parents. As an actor, you wonder what it’s like to be alone. I’m sure at some point in our life we have all been alone or cast out.”
Pula PRO: Screenplay of a Blockbuster
The second pitching programme – Screenplay of a Blockbuster, took place at Valli Cinema. The programme is aimed at developing screenplays of domestic feature film projects that successfully combine authorial and commercial sensibilities. Six authors presented their projects:
1 Best Dude in My Hood, a comedy written by Ivan Turković Krnjak about the neighbourhood postman Boško who helps the community every day through his work. His naivety and unconditional kindness often get him into trouble. With reference to director Sean Baker, who deals with his characters on the fringes of society with empathy and irony, the film opens the question: Where is the line between kindness and lack of intellect?
2 Wild Card, written by Nikol Kuprešanin about tennis player Goran Ivanišević and the key phases in his life – from childhood to becoming a Wimbledon champion in 2001. The screenplay was inspired by a text by Boris Dežulović of the same name, in which the four match points symbolise the four acts in Goran’s life: the difficult and turbulent beginnings, his sister’s illness, his rise to stardom and fall, and the final triumph at Winbledon in 2001. “This is the ultimate underdog story,” said Kuprešanin.
3 Once Upon a Time in Dalmatia, a comedy by screenwriter and director Ante Marin, combining a love story and a metafilm story, blurring the lines between what is real and what is not. The story takes place on a fictional island in Dalmatia, at a cove with an illegal camp and beach bar, where hippies, scouts, campers, and Split partygoers blend together. Their conflicts are further complicated by the arrival of a romance novel writer who is searching for inspiration and a girl he met one night.
4 VHS Club, a feature children’s film written by Darija Stilin, last year’s winner of the pitching programme. Three seventh-graders of an elementary school in Zagreb in 2027 accidentally travel back to 1997 via a VHS tape, and end up at the same school, just 30 years in the past. To come back home, they need to work with their parents, who are now their peers, to stop an event at the school concert, which will shape the future of the strict principal. The film relies on emotion, humour, and intergenerational understanding, and its main theme is bullying. The author said: “Small traumas can have great consequences, but they can be healed.”
5 A Wonderful Life is a biopic with elements of fiction by screenwriter Nikolina Bogdanović and producer Miljenka Čogelja that follows the life of Jovanka Broz – from her arrival to Brijuni Islands as Tito’s lover, becoming the first lady, to Tito’s death and her life in isolation. Intertwining the themes of love, power, betrayal, and fall, the authors wish to change the narrative on Jovanka, which has until now been told almost exclusively from a male perspective. The title of the film itself is a part of her statement: “God has given me a wonderful life alongside Tito, but as many years I have been happy, I have also been humiliated, abused, and tortured.”
6 What Big Eyes You Have!, animated action film by Dino Krpan and Rona Žulj about a girl who comes to an island to visit her grandfather and discovers a large AI centre set up by a multimillionaire. She soon becomes aware of the threat that the centre poses for nature and human kind. With the help of her grandfather and a dormouse, she begins her journey to fight to save the island – she sets animals free and stands up to the villains. The authors emphasise the strong message of the film: “In order to truly see, sometimes we need look away from the screen.”
The programme Screenplay of a Blockbuster was further improved this year by introducing workshops for screenplay development in cooperation with the Croatian Screenwriters and Playwrights Guild (SPID). The mentors for this programme were directors Vinko Brešan and Mitja Okorn, and screenwriter Ljubica Luković. The authors worked with mentor Vanja Jambrović to prepare for their presentations of projects, which were judged by the jury consisting of producer Miloš Pušić, editor Vladimir Gojun and producer Ivan Maloča, and which are competing for the 10,000 EUR prize sponsored by the Croatian Audiovisual Centre and the distribution company Blitz.
Presenting the Nikola Tanhofer Awards
This year’s Nikola Tanhofer Award for best cinematographers was presented at the 72nd Pula Film Festival in three categories by the Croatian Cinematographers Society, led by president Mario Sablić:
1 Director of photography Sara Bernarda Moritz was presented the award for short film for the film Arka, and producer Danijel Popović received the award on her behalf. “This film was a very demanding project, and we are pleased to have won this award for this film precisely and that it has been recognised by the profession,” he said.
2 Director of photography Vanja Černjul was presented the award for TV series for the HBO hit series The Gilded Age, and Nina Violić received the award on his behalf. “Vanja sends his regards and kisses from London, where he is on set for season 2 of The Gilded Age, and sends his many thanks for this award. He also wishes to congratulate Tomislav Sutlar and Frane Pamić for their extraordinary work.”
3 Ante Cvitanović was presented the award for feature film for the film Dražen. “I am deeply honoured to receive this award for my first feature film. It is my great pleasure and I would like to thank the entire Croatian and American crew for a pleasant atmosphere and cooperation,” he said at the Festival Centre.
High Noon, critics’ duel with Slivestar Mileta and Dina Pokrajac
Wednesday at Pula Film Festival
Pula PRO
Pula PRO brings the pitching programme Work in Progress at Valli Cinema at 10 a.m. The programme is aimed at Croatian and minority feature projects in postproduction phase. The projects are judged by Izabela Igel, Tajana Kosor, and Dorian Magagnin, and Ena Rahelić, head of Industry and strategic development consultant at Mediterranean Film Festival Split/Kino Mediteran, prepared the teams for their pitching.
At the Youth Centre (Giardini 2, next to Valli Cinema) at noon, we will find out the details about the development and production of the series Operation Sabre, which was selected for Canneseries Festival and which has been well received by audience and critics. Valuable insights into all aspects of creating this political thriller based on true events that have changed modern Serbian history will be provided by coauthor and one of the directors, Goran Stanković, and producer Snežana van Houwelingen in their lecture “From real events to series: creative and production process of Operation Sabre.
We will start the conversations with the film crews of Good Children, directed by Filip Peruzović (Croatian Film), Wishing on a Star, directed by Peter Kerekes (Minority Co-production), Dražen, directed by Danilo Šerbedžija and co-directed by Ljubo Zdjelarević (Croatian Film), and The Lost Dream Team, directed by Jure Pavlović (Croatian Film, out of competiton) at the Festival Centre at 10 a.m. The day will continue with the High Noon critics’ duel, where Duško Dimitrovski and Marko Stojiljković will discuss the films Good Children and Dražen.
The evening at the Arena brings the documentary film The Lost Dream Team, directed by Jure Pavlović, about the Yugoslav national basketball team who won the gold medal in 1991 at the European Championship in Rome, stood on the podium and watched their flag rise – all for the glory of a country that ceased to exist three days earlier. The film will be screened at 9.15 p.m. at the Arena, while the new Regional Programme will be concluded at Valli Cinema at 8 p.m. with the coming-of-age drama Nineteen, directed by Giovanni Tortorici.
The Festival day will be concluded with the closing party by DJ Mario Kovač at 11 p.m.
