ZagrebDox: Coming of Age Marked by Eventful Film Programme

International documentary film festival ZagrebDox will offer around eighty masterpieces which examine the challenging time in which we live.

The 18^th edition of ZagrebDox, international documentary film festival to take place between 3 and 10 April, brings around eighty best topical documentary stories from all over the world. In this challenging period marked by restrictions and unexpected events, the films are characterised by various concepts, approaches and poetics questioning the sense of divisions, borders, wars, individual responsibility but also emphasizing the importance of communication, coexistence, independence, individuality and coping.

Around thirty films will be screened in the Kaptol Boutique Cinema as a part of the international and regional competition. The remaining films are part of other official programmes such as Biography Dox, Masters Dox, Teen Dox, Controversial Dox and State of Affairs.

The competition features many films honoured at festivals around the world. For example, documentary film fans will have a chance to watch A Night of Knowing Nothing, the debut film by director Payal Kapadia which won the Golden Eye Award for Best Documentary at the Cannes Film Festival. There is also the screening of the film Ascension by American filmmaker Jessica Kingdon, an Oscar-nominated documentary and the best documentary at Tribeca Film Festival. At this festival, the director was also awarded for the best documentary debut filmmaker.

Another example is the shocking multi-award-winning Swedish documentary Sabaya by director Hogir Hirori which won about 15 awards, including the best documentary at Sundance Film Festival, as well as at international film festivals in Moscow, Stockholm, Hong Kong and at DocAviv.

Another film scheduled for the festival is the current winner of the Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival (IDFA) in the Envision competition – Lebanese director Karim Kassem’s film Octopus. The audience will get a chance to see the film by Polish author Paweł Łoziński entitled The Balcony Movie, which won a Grand Prix in the Critics Week Award category at the international Locarno Film Festival. The debut film Father by Chinese author Wei Deng which won the Golden Dove at DOK Leipzig festival will also be screened.

This year again, in addition to the film programme, ZagrebDox includes the ZagrebDox PRO platform dedicated to the education of film professionals, as well as a number of additional events in the form of special screenings, discussion and presentations.