Hope for hope? 21st Dox Said: Yes!

There was hardly a screening at this year’s ZagrebDox without someone asking for an extra ticket. This is a huge compliment for a festival, even for a prestigious festival like ZagrebDox. Only the biggest can boast of continuous audience support for over two decades. In the eight festival days, the audience had the opportunity to watch as many as 107 documentary films in 16 programme sections. The Big Stamp went to Mr. Nobody Against Putin, by David Borenstein and Pasha Talankin, in International Competition, and My Dad’s Lessons, by Dalija Dozet, in Regional Competition, while the Little Stamp for Best Short Film went to Arshia Shakiba for the film Who Loves the Sun.

The film Woman of God, by Maja Prettner, won the HRT Audience Award in Regional Competition with a high score of 4.94. And what to say about Home Game, by Lidija Zelović? The film won the Aviteh Audience Award in International Competition with an average score of 4.96.

The artistic director and founder of ZagrebDox Nenad Puhovski said: “Happiness is the rarest thing that smart people possess, a famous American writer once said. I might even agree. But why should we always be – smart? Why not afford ourselves, already rare moments of happiness... moments that we truly live for? And that give us that real, genuine energy... Smartness will come... or won’t... We at ZagrebDox are happy these days. First of all, because of the 15,000 viewers who passed through our cinemas, hung out in cafes and talked about films and the world we live in. We are happy, because the theatres were full to capacity and rerun demands, because of the people who stop us to praise the Festival, because of the great team and the atmosphere in it, the media coverage... Allow us those few moments of happiness. Soon we will be smart again and rely on – hope.”

Numerous novelties accompanied this year’s ZagrebDox. The official programme included audio documentaries that could be listened to on the ZagrebDox website during the Festival, and after ZagrebDox ended in theatres, ZagrebDox will begin on the Loli.stream platform from April 6 to 13.

The audience voted using smartphones, and the number of booklets and posters was reduced. Although ZagrebDox has always been a sustainable festival in terms of programming and organisation, the organisers decided that it was time to become such in terms of implementation as well.

“The 21 st ZagrebDox is a success story from the production point of view. Ticket sales increased by 20 percent, almost half of the programme was presented by authors, we introduced digital voting for audience awards, we introduced a new segment called Audio Dox, Slow Pitch, a new concept of the ZagrebDox Pro event, was successfully launched, we had an extremely interesting, relevant and well-attended discursive programme... Perhaps we did too much in one year! I am grateful to the entire team and all the volunteers for doing their best to ensure that this year’s ZagrebDox achieved (and partly exceeded!) production plans and expectations! The audience recognised this and rewarded it with a great response, for which we are especially grateful!” concluded ZagrebDox executive director Hrvoje Pukšec.

In announcing the 21 st edition of ZagrebDox, its founder Nenad Puhovski said that ZagrebDox was born out of an idealistic and somewhat unrealistic need to understand the world, if we cannot improve it. He also asked himself if it even makes sense. The audience answered his question with packed cinemas, queues at the box office and long conversations after screenings of documentary films that showed us how the world’s best filmmakers, of all generations, nationalities and ‘signatures’ see the world we live in.

The eight-day journey around the world has come to an end, see you at the 22 nd ZagrebDox!

ZagrebDox took place with the support of the City of Zagreb, the Croatian Audiovisual Centre, the Kultura Nova Foundation, the Society of Croatian Filmmakers and the Zagreb Tourist Board.