An overview of the most important European documentaries

Over 150 titles, eight festival days, seven different categories, recipients of one Oscar and several awards from influential international festivals, impressive retrospectives and a number of other documentary surprises are the best selling points which are bound to attract large audiences to the 8th ZagrebDox, the biggest international documentary film festival in the region which will be held between 26th February and 4th March.

The eighth edition of ZagrebDox, the biggest international documentary film festival in the region, scheduled to take place between 26th February and 4th March, will certainly attract the attention of numerous Croatian and foreign documentary film aficionados and professional film makers. Over the eight festival days, the audiences will be able to see over 150 documentaries from current international and regional productions. They will be shown in different categories and in different locations in Zagreb.

The competition programme encompasses 50 different titles, 30 in the international competition category and 20 in the regional competition. As in previous years, some of the films have already been awarded at various international festivals such as IDFA, Hot Docs, Dok Leipzig and Sundance. Among them is even one Oscar recipient. According to the traditions of the festival, in addition to the main competition programme, there is also a number of other official programmes, including “Musical Globe”, “Controversial Dox”, “Happy Dox”, “State of Affairs”, and the two which were launched last year, “Masters of Dox” and “Teen Dox”.

“Musical Globe” brings musical stories from all over the world, “Happy Dox” is all about the positively toned documentaries, whereas “Teen Dox” focuses on the teenage population and tries to bring the documentary form closer to them.

“Controversial Dox” includes those films which deal with controversial individuals, social deviations or challenging political issues. The “State of Affairs” programme features such works which document topical and often unknown social issues and thus provide audiences with insight into the state of affairs of modern society. Last but not least, “Masters of Dox” provides audiences with insight into the recent work of world renowned documentary film authors. This year, these will be films by such masters as Werner Herzog, Victor Kossakovski, Kevin Macdonald, Nick Broomfield, Errol Morris, Mojtaba Mirtahmasba and Jafar Panahi.

The concurrent programmes encompass several retrospectives. The first one presents the contemporary Baltic documentaries selected by the Danish film expert Tue Steen Müller, who has included documentaries by Estonian, Lithuanian and Latvian authors. The second retrospective presents the Danish Film School (Den Danske Filmskole) selected by Arne Bro, the head of the DDF documentary film studio. The Mondo film retrospective will showcase documentaries which marked the 60’s of last century when documentaries were exploited for covering sensationalist topics. This year, another retrospective will feature works by Jay Rosenblatt, an internationally renowned and multi award winning independent American film maker with a film opus of over 25 titles and some hundred different awards to his name.

This year, Croatian retrospectives present the work of Fade-In, a production company which has made a significant impact on the development of Croatian documentaries, primarily due to its film activism and a series of very intriguing documentaries, as well as the television series “Direkt”. The author’s evening is dedicated to Tomislav Radić and a selection of some forty documentaries that he made for Television Zagreb during the 70’s of last century.