Scratching the Surface of the World We Live In

Despite the fact that they can lead to heated debates, controversial topics are certainly one of the best ways to explore different views of the world around us, whether it’s politics, culture, ethics or traditional beliefs. The six films in the Controversial Dox category will no doubt provoke strong opinions and even disagreements among viewers of different persuasions. That is their point: to encourage communication, reflection and questioning

A Wolfpack Called Ernesto, by Mexican director Everardo González, takes us into the terrifying world of Ernesto, a group of teenagers who are both bullies and victims. Drawing a parallel with the weapon manufacturing, A Wolfpack Called Ernesto takes place in a double spiral of violence that creates a new victim of firearms every 40 minutes. Ernesto has been screened at a number of festivals, one of which is the Canadian Hot Docs. A little further south, in Tribeca, the following film won the award for best editing. Two pious sisters buy an apartment after witnessing a ‘divine sign’, only to realize that the seller of the apartment looks identical to their sister, who committed suicide thirty years ago. Full of comically awkward situations and exciting revelations, Swedish director Maria Fredriksson’s film The Gullspång Miracle deftly explores identity and the consequences of stubborn beliefs and provides a reminder of the strangeness of life and the magic of existence.

European festivals (IDFA, Warsaw, DocPoint) were frequented by a film addressing the most controversial topic of all, the so-called war tourism. Danger Zone Vita is the film directed by the Polish director Vita Maria Drygas explores the world of war tourism, which allows those interested to have the most extreme experiences. War has become a luxury product, a commodity that can be bought and sold, and travel agencies are desperate for their share of the profit. From war tourism, Controversial Dox turns to medical tourism! Although we can hardly qualify medical tourism as a controversial topic, many people use it to travel due to the inability to exercise the right to medical procedures such as abortion, euthanasia or artificial insemination in the country where they live. Elina Psykou’s Stray Bodies offers a reflection on bodily autonomy on a continent where Christian heritage and conservatism are obstacles to freedom of choice. The film from 2024 was shown only in Thessaloniki and Copenhagen before Zagreb. Just like the next controversial movie!

Sometimes you don’t have to go to another country to make the impossible happen. The next protagonists are the Japanese: they are known as Johatsu or ‘the evaporated’. In Japan, people disappear without a trace with the help of so-called ‘night removal’ companies that help them escape from their lives. The film Johatsu – Into Thin Air directed by Andreas Hartmann and Arata Mori portrays the individual stories of those people who deliberately leave everything behind to start a new life someplace else.

Sexual abuse is always a difficult topic, especially when it comes to the abuse of minors in the family. The autobiographical documentary A Family is the directorial debut of award-winning French writer Christine Angot and an incredible cinematic journey that questions social norms and family perspectives in dealing with incest. An extremely poignant, powerful film, recently awarded at the Berlinale.

The State of Affairs section of the 20th ZagrebDox, as always, features films that raise questions about our everyday life. Whether it questions what work means today, the question of the ethical background of documentary, the toxicity of social networks, the impact of war destruction on the landscape, the reasons that drive people to come to war in another country... in short, everything that we face when we think about where the world is today.

Immediately after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, Taliban forces occupied the Hollywood Gate complex, which is claimed to be a former CIA base in Kabul. Unprecedented and audacious, Hollywoodgate is a documentary by Ibrahim Nash’at, who spends a year in Afghanistan following the Taliban as they take over American weapons—and transform themselves from a fundamentalist militia into a heavily armed military regime. The film was awarded in Zurich, and attracted large audiences at the most prestigious festivals such as the Mostra, IDFA, Stockholm and Tallinn. Mojtaba, Hamzeh, Zar as well as many others were subjected to painful interrogation in an Iranian prison. In the documentary My Worst Enemy, director Mehran Tamadon wants them to ‘interrogate’ him, as they were interrogated by agents of the Islamic Republic. The next film deals with a universal theme. With characters and narratives spanning four continents, Erik Gandini’s film After Work (CPH:DOX, Visions du Réel) seeks an existential answer to the question of what work means today, how things might look in the future, and what will happen to us when we won’t work.

Many will choose travel instead of work... In the form of a trip through Eastern Armenia, Daniel Kötter’s film Landshaft intertwines stories from the war and gold mining as two aspects of the same violence inflicted on the landscape. Violence currently dominates in Ukraine. Intelligence services have intercepted thousands of phone calls made by Russian soldiers from the battlefield in Ukraine to their families and friends in Russia. Their words reveal the full extent of the dehumanizing power of war and the imperialistic nature of Russian aggression. Showing two parallel worlds, the film Intercepted by Oksana Karpovych seeks an answer to the question of what motivates people who come to fight in a foreign country. The film won two awards at the Berlinale, and has numerous other festival appearances. Some wars seem to last forever and ever. At the age of 88, Geizi Tsafrir, a former agent of the Israel Security Agency, is questioning his role in the first targeted assassination carried out by Israel in the Gaza Strip. He discovers that the target’s daughter, Nonie Darwish, lives in Los Angeles, and thus begins the difficult journey towards mutual understanding and forgiveness that brings us the movie Telling Nonie, directed by Paz Schwartz.

IDFA, SXSW, Gijón, Ji.hlava, Hot Docs and Raindance were just some of the stops before ZagrebDox for the film Another Body. The directorial duo of Sophie Compton and Reuben Hamlyn follows American student Taylor’s search for answers and justice after she discovers counterfeit pornography on the Internet in which she herself is the protagonist. On the other hand, Yousef Srouji’s Three Promises presents a poignant portrait of everyday life in war, and between the lines there is a touching story about the beauty of a mother’s love. Merging the voice of the present with impressive family recordings, Yousef completes the story that his mother began during the Second Intifada, thus saving it from oblivion, both personal and collective.

Trump’s long-time adviser, one of today’s greatest fashion designers, a famous Croatian photographer, but also a ‘nameless body’ are the main protagonists of the four documentaries that make up this year’s Biography Dox segment. Women from the family of Vladimira Spindler, the author of the film, The Genes of My Children, have been involved in art for four generations. In addition to artistic talent, they are connected by something else: the repetition of similar patterns in relationships with men. The Genes of My Children is a story about women who left their mark on culture and about the weight of emancipation in the past and today. High&Low – John Galliano, Oscar winner Kevin Macdonald’s film takes us into the world of the colourful and iconoclastic John Galliano, one of the most important fashion designers in history. After a video of Galliano spewing anti-Semitic slurs in a Paris bar emerged in February 2011, he was fired from Dior, and the community condemned him and ostracized him from the world of fashion. He lost everything – and then tried to redeem himself. In addition to the fallen angel of fashion, Sidney Toledano, Kate Moss, Boris Cyrulnik, Penelope Cruz and Charlize Theron also appear in the film. The Danish documentary A Storm Foretold by director Christoffer Guldbrandsen is a stunning portrait of Trump’s longtime adviser Roger Stone. Important, remarkable and at times frightening, the film captures the combination of toxicity, duplicity and openness that makes Stone such an influential and dangerous figure in American politics. The lifeless, nameless bodies could easily remain an unsolved mystery if they hadn’t met the forensic scientist Cristina on her way from the morgue to the anonymous grave, who calls them ‘pure unknowns. Lately, it’s mostly about migrants who were thrown onto the Italian coast by the Mediterranean Sea, and while doing autopsies and genetic tests, which bring the atmosphere of this film closer to the crime genre, Cristina doesn’t give up on any ‘unknown, because she knows that to return the body to those who loved him means taking care of the living, of those who remain. Can Europe be saved from its indifference is the question posed by Valentina Cicogna and Mattia Colombo in their film Pure Unknown. The film won an award in Turin, and was shown, among others, in Karlovy Vary, Hot Docs and Visions du Réel.

Tickets can be purchased in presale and during the Festival at the box office of the Kaptol Boutique Cinema (Centar Kaptol, 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.