A sneak peak into a slice of this year's excellent program

Masters of Dox, a long-standing program of the ZagrebDox International Documentary Film Festival, has traditionally featured films by authors who are making history in both documentary and feature film. At the twenty-first ZagrebDox, you will have the opportunity to watch five exceptional works directed by true "masters of the craft": Victor Kossakovsky, Nicolas Philibert, Vitaly Mansky, Sergei Loznitsa and Jasmila Žbanić.

Architecton, a documentary directed by Victor Kossakovsky, has visited numerous relevant world film festivals such as Berlinale, IDFA, CPH:DOX, DOCNYC, and brings us an epic, yet intimate and poetic meditation on architecture and how design and architecture offer hope for survival. Berlinale, IDFA, Visions du Réel, BFI London FF, Viennale, Hong Kong IFF and Vancouver IFF are the festivals where Nicolas Philibert's film At Averroès & Rosa Parks was screened before its screening at ZagrebDox. It is about two psychiatric units in a Parisian hospital, and from individual interviews to meetings between patients and caregivers, the director focuses on depicting a form of psychiatry that constantly strives to make room for the patients' words and rehabilitate them. Iron, a film directed by a long-time friend of ZagrebDox, the acclaimed Vitaly Mansky, consists of interconnected miniatures about people and military equipment in cities in different countries, and was screened at IDFA. A decade after the release of his epic film Maidan, Sergey Loznitsa continues his Ukrainian chronicles documenting the country's struggle against the Russian invasion. Filmed over two years, The Invasion (Cannes, IDFA, DocLisboa...) represents a unique and ultimate statement of Ukrainian resilience in the face of barbaric invasion. Blum – Masters of their own destiny by Jasmile Žbanić, which was shown at Doc Fortnight 2025, but also at the prestigious MoMA, introduces us to the story of Emeric Blum, an entrepreneur who from a small studio created a large, very successful company working according to the model of self-management, that is, the participation of workers in management and profit.

ZagrebDox's new category, Films about Film, brings us Burden of Dreams, a film by Les Blank and Maureen Gosling, which follows legendary director Werner Herzog, who was awarded the Big Stamp for lifetime achievement at last year's ZagrebDox, on the making of his most ambitious film, Fitzcarraldo. The film won the BAFTA – Flaherty Documentary Award and was also screened at IDFA, Cinéma du Réel, São Paulo IFF and San Francisco IFF. The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing, by Theo Panagopoulos, was named best short documentary at IDFA and was also screened at Sundance Film Festival, Edinburgh IFF and Slamdance FF. A Palestinian filmmaker living in Scotland uncovers hidden footage of the wildflowers of his homeland. Inspired by this rare archive, he embarks on a journey to reclaim and preserve this precious visual heritage. Once Upon a Time Michel Legrand, by David Hertzog Dessites, is a stunning portrait of the famous jazz musician and film composer Michel Legrand. Using exclusive personal archives, the film takes us through the last two years of his life. Intimate moments with colleagues, friends and his wife are also shown, as well as moments of loneliness dedicated to his writing. The film was screened in Cannes, and won the audience award at the Aegean FF. The Return of the Projectionist, by Orkhan Aghazadeh, was awarded as the best film in the international competition in Turin, at the Festival des 3 Continents. It won the Youth Jury Award and Special Mention: Professional Jury, and was shown at Visions du Réel, Chicago IFF and Jerusalem FF. In a remote village in the Talysh mountains between Iran and Azerbaijan, TV repairman Samid faces many challenges, but finds an unexpected ally in 16-year-old Ayaz, a film enthusiast who experiments with animation on his smartphone and is eager to learn from Samid.

The Lifetime Achievement Award, presented by the Festival's Artistic Director Nenad Puhovski at this year's ZagrebDox, will be presented to Swiss-Canadian film director and cinematographer Peter Mettler, whose oeuvre is characterized by hybrid forms, with his films often combining travelogue, essay, interview, fiction and criticism. He explores themes of transcendence and the relationship between nature and technology, guided by an instinct that is based on discipline, structure, skill and the ability to capture stunning images. Mettler's work holds a unique position, not only because of his innovations in the field of documentary film, but also because of his creation of new art forms where cinematography merges with other disciplines. At ZagrebDox, we will have the opportunity to watch three films by this important director as part of the retrospective program. Picture of Light was named one of the 150 most significant Canadian films, and among its numerous awards, it won the La Sarraz Prize in Locarno. It is a captivating cinematic journey to the Canadian Arctic in search of the northern lights. Exploring the tension between nature and technology, and between science and myth, Picture of Light reveals how our increasingly connected world threatens to “render obsolete” our individual, authentic experiences. Gambling, Gods and LSD is a diary of sorts documenting the director's "introspective journey" through four countries: Canada, the United States, Switzerland and India. The film consists of four segments, each showing what people do to discover themselves and find happiness. In Mettler's third film that will be shown at ZagrebDox, The End of Time, the director tries to "catch the elusive" with the camera. From the CERN particle accelerator in Switzerland, where scientists want to explore the regions of time we can't see, to the lava flows in Hawaii that washed away all but one home on the south side of the Big Island; from the crumbling of downtown Detroit to a funeral rite near the site of the Buddha's enlightenment, Mettler explores our perception of time.

The Author's Evening at this year's ZagrebDox is dedicated to director Igor Mirković. The Cinehill director has directed acclaimed and award-winning documentaries such as New, New Time / Who Wants to Be President? and Happy Child, a musical documentary about the punk-rock movement in communist Yugoslavia, and ZagrebDox will screen his documentary L.A. Unfinished. L.A. Unfinished is the story of a painting, a huge oil on canvas that painter Lovro Artuković decided to paint on the eve of his biggest exhibition. In order to create a vision of a fake historical event, Lovro gathered his friends and assigned them roles: some of them became presidents, some advisors, some UN observers...