Monday at ZagrebDox

After Sunday’s official opening, marked by the premiere of Nebojša Slijepčević’s new film Red Slide about the fight for a children’s playground in the Zagreb neighbourhood of Savica and Aleksandar Reljić’s extremely relevant The Loudest Silence about the student blockade and protests in Serbia, the first full day of the 21 st ZagrebDox features a lavish start to the festival’s line-up of more than a hundred recent and classic, suspenseful and poignant, reflective and humane works of global documentary cinema in all five theatres of Kaptol Boutique Cinema. In an attempt to understand the world around us and find hope for its future, the films are joined by the most eventful ever discursive programme including talks, panels and masterclasses with a record-breaking number of authors.

Today’s first screening, free for all visitors, is the autobiographical story of the Irish artist Myrid Carten A Want in Her (2 pm, theatre 2) about her relationship with her mentally unstable alcoholic mother and the rest of her family equally steeped in various vices, rages and secrets. The director’s professional background is evident in the thoughtful and beautiful composition of diverse visual sources from three decades of personal and family history. At 3 pm, the most prestigious international and regional competitions of the 21 st ZagrebDox will simultaneously begin with the films Yalla Parkour (dir. Areeb Zuaiter, theatre 4) and Alice On & Off (dir. Isabela Tent, theatre 5). The mentioned acrobatic skill practiced in war-torn Gaza by the protagonist Ahmed, with whom director Areeb Zuaiter establishes a direct relationship, is in the focus of the first, while the namesake heroine, a very young mother, sex worker, failed student and addict in a vortex of generational traumas, is portrayed in the second film, shot over the course of ten years.

The international competition continues its line-up at 3:30 pm with Wind Has No Tail (dir. Ivan Vlasov and Nikita Stashkevich, theatre 1) and Mr. Nobody Against Putin (dir. David Borenstein, Pasha Talankin, theatre 3). Wind Has No Tail follows the beginning of schooling for a Nenet girl from the Yamal Peninsula in northern Siberia. The nomadic nature of her people, however, raises the question of children’s rights at the crossroads of tradition and the desire for education in this beautifully shot and ethnologically rich observational film. Mr. Nobody Against Putin, awarded a special jury prize at Sundance Film Festival, will remind some of the ZagrebDox classic Three Rooms of Melancholia with its subject of militarisation and general ideologisation of the Russian school system in the context of the invasion of Ukraine (mediated from the personal perspective of a brave teacher and amateur cinematographer from Karabash in the Chelyabinsk region). That teacher, now an emigrant, Pasha Talankin, will talk to the audience after the screening, together with co-director David Borenstein.

At 4 pm in Regional Competition in theatre 2, the well-known Slovak author Peter Kerekes (Cooking History, Velvet Terrorists) presents his new film Wishing on a Star to the local audience – a characteristically humorous story for this author about the clients of an Italian astrologer who, in an attempt to put their lives on the right track, undertake birthday trips in accordance with favourable constellations.

At 5 pm, you will have to choose between another title in Regional Competition (Night of the Coyotes, dir. Clara Trischler, theatre 4) and the first title of this year’s edition of the traditional ZagrebDox section Musical Globe (HAIYU – Rebel Singer Mariem Hassan and the Struggle for a Free Western Sahara, dir. group of authors, theatre 5). Night of the Coyotes depicts the inhabitants of a Mexican town on the verge of extinction who come up with the idea of ​​attracting tourists by staging the drama of crossing the American border – a procedure that may also bring to mind Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing. HAIYU, on the other hand, is a somewhat classical, clear and thorough biography of the influential singer and activist (1958 – 2015) from the last African colony.

At 17:30 pm, along with a Q&A with the director, the new film by the talented Dalija Dozet, My Dad’s Lessons (theatre 1, Regional Competition), will premiere – a work painstakingly prepared over years based on the vast unsorted video archive of a man who recorded his everyday life with a camera, thus providing his daughter with a post-mortem insight into the different phases of his life. This debut feature-length documentary is shown in the same section as Field Trip by Jozo Schmuch, about an organised, mandatory school visit to Vukovar at the crossroads of adolescent priorities, the imperative of respect and attempts to create collective memory. Director Schmuch will also talk to the audience after the screening. The Polish master of historical found footage and alternative approaches to historical topics, Tomasz Wolski, also personally presents A Year in the Life of a Country (International Competition) at 17:30 pm in theatre 3 about social movements in Poland in 1981 – protests, riots, the introduction of Martial Law and the Solidarity trade union. The special value of Wolski’s material is in referring to everyday life burdened by reductions, shortages, poverty and spinelessness.

Respite from difficult topics is offered at 6 pm by two Happy Doxes – Koki, Ciao by Quenton Miller (in addition to another Q&A) and A Song for My Land by Mauricio Albornoz Iniesta. Tito’s 67-year-old cockatoo, a Brijuni witness to the pinnacles of the Non-Aligned Movement and a favourite of famous guests in theatre 2, is thus joined by another enthusiastic teacher – the charismatic music teacher Ramiro, who in rural Argentina is opposing spray fertilisation near schools by organising a children’s ecological Woodstock.

At 7 pm, theatre 4 is booked for the autobiographical The Shards by Masha Chernaya from International Competition. The winning film of the prestigious Doclisboa festival is a fascinating collage of Russia’s internal disintegration and the protagonist who, instead of fleeing abroad, flees to the unfettered youth underground scene juxtaposed and opposed to scenes of postmodern dictatorship. In the Films about Films segment, theatre 5 simultaneously offers a somewhat more classical biographical work by David Hertzog Dessites, Once Upon a Time Michel Legrand, focused on the last years of the legendary French film and jazz composer’s life, which draws mostly from the great musician’s personal stories and private archive.

At 19:30 (theatre 1), in the Masters of Dox section, we can watch for the first time a new film by one of the most successful regional directors, Jasmila Žbanić, dedicated to the Yugoslav self-governing engineering giant Energoinvest and its founder Emerik Blum, Blum – Masters of Their Own Destiny (with Q&A). At the same time, theatre 3 will also host a rerun, also with a Q&A with the authors, of the opening films of the 21 st ZagrebDox - Red Slide by Nebojša Slijepčević and The Loudest Silence by Aleksandar Reljić.

Monday’s prime time is reserved, as befits, for the new work of modern documentary classic Sergej Loznitsa, The Invasion (8 pm, theatre 2, Masters of Dox), a powerful and definitive testimony of Ukrainian resistance to the barbarian invasion through the indomitable national spirit.

At 9 pm in theatre 4, another autobiographical dox, It’s Not Me, takes us into the artistic world of the iconic French director Leos Carax. This unmissable medium-length filmological treat is actually made as an overview of Carax’s characters and films in a web of references and inspirations from the history of film and political events. Carax’s self-portrait is paired in the same screening block with this year’s first ‘green doc’, Responsible – There Is No Business to Be Done on a Broken Planet (dir. Julien Demond, Tristan Lochon), which, in an attempt to change the shareholder profit model, explores the possibilities of responsible business for the common good. 

In theatre 5 at 9 pm Mistress Dispeller by Elizabeth Lo (International Competition) is dedicated to the strange contemporary phenomenon of the Chinese ‘love industry specialising in breaking up the relationships of married couples with their lovers and mistresses’. The film, which has won a whole bunch of festival awards, follows an uncompromising professional in this ‘profession’ on a particularly demanding task, while providing insight into the emotions, pragmatism and cultural norms of today’s China.

The 21 st ZagrebDox’s Monday will close at 9:30 pm with Abortion Dream Team (dir. Karolina Lucyna Domagalska, div. 1) and Rising up at Night (dir. Nelson Makengo, theatre 3). The first is the story of an activist quartet who, despite significant personal sacrifices, run a hotline in conservative Poland and provide support to women seeking abortions, while the second is a nocturnal epic about the capital of DR Congo, Kinshasa, and its vital population that finds motives for survival in an environment of violence, poverty and literal darkness.

Finally, let us note that tired eyes can rest every day of the 21 st ZagrebDox and leave the entire task to the ears from 2 to 10 pm in the lobby of Kaptol Boutique Cinema, where in the new Audio Dox programme section they can listen to six radio features / podcasts from all over Europe, nominated and awarded at last year’s PRIX EUROPA festival. Today we single out the first among them – I’m Carrie Jade Williams! by Ronan Kelly about a serial con artist who fakes a terminal illness.

ZagrebDox International Documentary Film Festival awaits us in Kaptol Boutique cinemas until April 6, 2025.