ZagrebDox Monday

Yesterday’s official opening of the 20^th anniversary ZagrebDox, with its touching, significant, but brief review of two decades of artistic and polemical mediation of reality (2,800 films, more than 350,000 viewers, over 6,500 guests) and the decisive shaping of Croatian and European documentary practice only confirmed how, respecting always the past and the classics, it is necessary to turn as soon as possible to the fundamental reasons for Dox’s timeless vitality – the latest and most relevant film works and the meetings and conversations associated with them.

 

Following such a festival ethos, the first full day of ZagrebDox, which begins at 2 p.m. in theatre 2 of Kaptol Boutique Cinema with a free screening of the film Kix (dir. Dávid Mikulán, Bálint Révész / Regional Competition), is full of attractive, provocative, thoughtful and important topics. This Hungarian-French-Croatian ‘observation with participation’ of the transformation of a Budapest kid into a disillusioned young man faced with the challenges of maturity is followed at 3 pm in theatre 4 by a selection of short and medium-length winners of the leading documentary festivals (Festival Hits section): and the Argentine-German film At That Very Moment (dir. Rita Pauls, Federico Luis Tachella) is a film about boyhood, but from a more subjective and reflective perspective (honoured at the Amsterdam IDFA where it celebrated in the short film competition), Les Chenilles (dir. Michelle Keserwany, Noel Keserwany) is an empathetic portrait of female solidarity, friendship and consolation awarded with the Berlin Golden Bear in the context of migration and the historical and contemporary ties between Lebanon and France, while An Asian Ghost Story (dir. Bo Wang) an intriguing, Leipzig and Copenhagen award-winning work on the lesser-known but economically crucial case of the Hong Kong wig industry and the embargo on Chinese hair trade in the 1960s. At the same time, in theatre 5 in the My Fave Dox section, realized in asociation with the Croatian Film Critics Association, Ognjen Glavonić’s feature-length, experimental-documentary debut Depth Two, premiered at the Berlinale 2016, can be seen, where his portrait of a crime deliberately forgotten, deleted from the collective memory did not go unnoticed.

 

At 3:30 p.m. in theatre 1, the film Fighting Demons with Dragons (dir. Camilla Magid), a Scandinavian story about an unusual high school where cosplay and role playing are used as a means of dealing with traumas, fluid identities and other challenges of adolescence, begins the all-time favourite Teen Dox. The prestigious International Competition will be opened simultaneously in theatre 3 by In the Rearview by the director and protagonist Maciek Hamela – a volunteer van carrier, Samaritan and confessor of generations of Ukrainian civilians in the vortex of war.

 

From 4:00 p.m. in theatre 2, Total Trust by the Emmy-nominated Chinese independent director Jialing Zhang confronts us with a disturbing story about the surveillance, intimidation and torture of three female activists, that is, about the political abuse of the power of Big Data and AI.

 

The 17^th hour on Monday brings My Worst Enemy (dir. Mehran Tamadon) to theatre 4, a performative work that, in the best tradition of documentary-psychodramatic debates on ethics, tries to place the victims of Iranian prisons in the position of their own torturers, and to theatre 5 the poetic Swedish Hypermoon, the end of the trilogy in which Mia Engberg, in the context of a devastating medical diagnosis, looked back on her own past with different cinematic means.

 

From 17:30 we are also looking forward to this year’s first ZagrebDox Q&A with filmmakers. In theatre 1, the occasion will be Igor Mirković’s new film Beautiful Lovely People (Regional Competition), which deals with the famous millennial photographs of Šime Strikoman, but above all with his models from small towns on the edge of Europe. In theatre 3, the audience will be able to ask questions to our respected film experimentalist Ana Hušman, who in I Would Rather Be a Stone, screened at the Rotterdam festival and nominated for the European Film Award, with the help of multiple exposures, family archives and a combination of photography and video looks back on personal memories, stories, regions and people, as well as Katarina Lukec, whose theme in Breadcrumb Trail is also regional – she is interested in the natives/returnees in the villages around Knin. Both films are also competing in Regional Competition.

 

The opening film of the 20^th ZagrebDox, absurd as well as true, humorous as well as critical, Smiling Georgia by Luka Beradze about the unusual meeting of dentistry, politics and (in)ability can be seen in the Happy Dox program at 6 pm in theatre.

 

International Competition at 7 pm (theatre 4) brings Mermaid (dir. Eilif Bremer Landsend), a visually exceptional Norwegian story about a fishing boat captain who follows in her father’s footsteps, and This Woman (dir. Alan Zhang), a bold Malaysian-Chinese hybrid reality and fiction that follows a young woman in dealing with the roles of wife, mother and daughter in a society constrained by norms, while promoting her attempts at emancipation and resistance to gender norms.

 

At the same time in Regional Competition (theatre 5) Kumjana Novakova’s Silence of Reason is shown, a Macedonian-Bosnian forensic video essay (awarded at the IDFA with the award for directing, but honoured with awards in Sarajevo and Belgrade as well) about the collective memory of rape camps from the time of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

 

The first film of the always popular Musical Globe this year is Grandpa Guru by Silvio Mirošničenko (19:30, theatre 1) about the band Kultur Shock, with special emphasis on the interesting life, music and art of their singer and frontman Srđan Gino Jevđević. After the screening, a Q&A with the author will take place.

 

The panel "Deepfake Technology and the Age of Doubt" as part of the ZagrebDoXXL event is the highlight of the discursive program on the first day of the festival. In the conversation after the screening of the film Another Body (dir. Sophie Compton, Reuben Hamlyn) (19:30, theatre 3), which follows the search of a victim of counterfeit pornography for answers and justice in the world of male abusers, but also her appropriation of this technological ‘means of crime’, Tomislav Fiket, Iva Ušćumlić, Tomislav Vuk and moderator Dina Pokrajac will take part.

 

Prime time in theatre 2 is reserved for the International Competition block dedicated to the Russian-Ukrainian War. From 8:00 p.m., Vladimir Loginov’s Boy, which connects the shot of a young soldier in the background of Vladimir Putin’s New Year’s message with the internal soundtrack of battlefield experiences shared with his family, and Photophobia (dir. Ivan Ostrochovský, Pavol Pekarčík) which depicts the underground, timeless and aimless Kharkiv life of a boy against the bloody conflict that is unfolding above his head.

 

Theatre 4 at 9 p.m. also shows this year’s first Controversial Dox Stray Bodies (dir. Elina Psykou) about the European ‘medical tourism’ of abortion, artificial insemination and euthanasia – a topic that is treated engagingly, but with the inclusion of both advocates and opponents and with often surreal, absurd and (black) humorous situations. At the same time, Elvis Lenić’s film Ship dedicated to Uljanik and honoured at the important documentary festival in Jihlava can be seen for the first time in theatre 5 – the central screening, along with a Q&A with the author, is scheduled for Saturday.

 

The first day of the 20^th ZagrebDox will be brought to an end by Telling Nonie (dir. Paz Schwartz, 9:30 p.m., floor 1) – a film that treats an extremely relevant topic in an individualized way and searches for understanding and forgiveness through the portrayal of the daughter of a notorious Palestinian terrorist, now a resident of the suburbs of Los Angeles who in the eighth decade of her life meets one of the participants in her father’s extermination – and Landshaft (dir. Daniel Kötter, 22, theatre 3) – a mosaic of war and economic devastation and exploitation of the landscape of eastern Armenia.

 

Tickets can be purchased in presale and during the Festival at the box office of the Kaptol Boutique Cinema (Kaptol Centre, Nova Ves 17), at the ticket machines in the lobby of the cinema and online at www.kaptolcinema.hr

ZagrebDox takes place with the support of the City of Zagreb, Croatian Audiovisual Centre, Kultura nova Foundation, Croatian Film Directors Guild and the City of Zagreb Tourist Board.