FOURTH DAY OF 68TH PULA FILM FESTIVAL MARKED BY FEMALE TOPICS AND RICH INDUSTRY PROGRAMME
The cathartic drama by Zrinko Ogresta was screened yesterday evening at the Arena. The film about human relationships stars Vanja Ćilić and Anja Šovagović Despot, and follows the story of Mirjana, a clerk at a Zagreb thread factory. Before a modest celebration to mark her 20 years with the factory, where she will be given an award, her interactions with her loved ones illustrate her entire life – the one she has gone through and is living, and the one that is yet to come. Director Ogresta was drawn to Ivor Martinić’s inconspicuous screenplay that focuses on family relationships, parent-child relationships, deep emotions, and the universal topic that lends itself to any time and place.
Prior to the screening of A Blue Flower, the Marijan Rotar Award was presented to Marko Zdravković-Kunc, the founder and president of Pula Film Factory, for his contribution to Pula film culture. One of the rare factories in Pula that is still operational is where groups of dedicated enthusiasts have been making documentary, live action, and experimental films for years and screening them at meetings at the factory, as well as sending them to revues and festivals. This factory takes care of the youth and children, organises film culture workshops for them, teaches them how to make animated films, and how to visualise their uninhibited ideas. It is also a place where young creators are presented, where new films and film classics are screened. The workers of this factory are restoring Pula’s film history, dusting off archival mosaics of Jelen Cinema Club and breathing new life into them.
The second screening at the Arena was the film that ran for an Academy Award this year, Quo Vadis, Aida? by award-winning director Jasmila Žbanić.
Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn by Romanian director Radu Jude, winner of this year’s Berlin International Film Festival, had its Croatian premiere last night in Pula. The film raises questions about the judgement and prejudice from a conservative society after a sex tape of a school teacher is leaked.
The European festival audience’s favourite film Limbo by Ben Sharrock was screened at Kaštel. This comedy/drama tells the story of a group of migrants on a Scottish island who wait for the results of their asylum claims and a chance for a better life.
The fourth day of the Festival was also marked by an abundant industry programme. Sydney Levine gave a talk about the placement of European film on the global market. With over 40 years of experience in various segments of the film industry, Sydney Levine is known for setting new standards, starting the first industry database for tracking and circulating the activity of acquisitions, FilmFinders, which Cannes Marché developed into a platform of data on film projects and professional networking services that was later sold to the most famous database for tracking films, IMDB.
Yesterday was the last day of the lectures, consultations, and one-on-one meetings of young producers with resident experts in the Pula Meeting Place programme. From April to June, participants (producers working on their first or second feature film) worked individually with the facilitator to draft a professional project presentation for a work in progress film and preparing it for international co-production.
Ahead of the new Sub-programme MEDIA 2021-2027 that focuses on developing film and television works, training, access to film fairs, distribution and circulation of European film, the brochure of Croatia’s participation in the Sub-programme MEDIA, titled “This is how WE do it! 2014-2020” was presented.
This evening, on the fifth day of the 68th Pula Film Festival, the world premiere of the action comedy Tune Up by Stanislav Tomić will be screened at the Arena in the Croatian Programme. The tamburica band Aveti ravnice (Momčilo Otašević, Hrvoje Barišić, Primož Petkovšek, Andrei Miercure, and Neven Aljinović-Tot) accept an invitation from the legendary Branko Uvodić and travel to the big tamburica festival. They are wrongfully accused of stealing the main prize, Golden Kulen, and they flee across the plains of Slavonia. They are chased by the police and angry tamburica bands. The film stars Tijana Pečenčić, Nikola Kojo, Stjepan Perić, Nives Ivanković, Elvira Aljukić, Mirna Medaković, Hristina Popović, Miran Kurspahić, and, of course, Branko Uvodić. Damir Martinović Mrle is the author of the score.
In the Special Screenings Programe, the Academy Award winner Ida by Pawel Pawlikowski, this year’s president of the jury in the Croatian Programme, will be screened this evening. Pawlikowski will attend the screening and speak to the audience, which will add to this already special screening.
The Croatian premiere of the fantasy drama Mayday directed by Karen Cinnore will be screened at Kaštel. This American production was filmed in the vicinity of Pula and screened at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival and International Film Festival Rotterdam.
The evening of film will be closed at the Arena with the Croatian premiere of the film The Big Hit, by French director Emmanuel Courcol, which won the European Film Award for Best European Comedy. Etienne, an actor past his prime, runs a theatre workshop in a prison, where he brings together an unlikely troupe of prisoners to stage Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot.
