Motovun Film Festival’s successor brings new films by Agnieszka Holland and Kirill Serebrennikov • Award-winning directors, actors and even one dog  

This year’s Cinehill on the slopes of Gorski Kotar is definitely gearing up to be the festival of the best of everything. One of the reasons this motto holds true is the selection of films that include numerous award-winning titles from the most prestigious festivals. Indie titles from national cinemas we don’t often get a chance to see is the direction that Motovun Film Festival’s successor is taking as well.

Among the amazing films in the main program is the one directed by an old guest and longtime friend of the festival, Agnieszka Holland. Green Border tackles the problem of refugees in the swampy woodlands on the border between Poland and Belarus, caught amidst the geopolitical crisis caused by the Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko.

“Besides a Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival and the nomination for the European Film Award, the film received perhaps the most important award of all. It is this year’s only European film against which four ministers in the Polish conservative government at the time launched a campaign, and nationalists organised an online smear campaign of negative ratings. All of this turned Green Border into one of the most important European films of the season”, highlights the selector of the main festival program, Jurica Pavičić.

Kalak was awarded a Special Jury Prize at the festival in San Sebastián. The first film from Greenland at this festival centres on a young man attempting to create a new life for himself after the trauma of sexual abuse committed by his father. The story of marital infidelity and passion takes us into an interesting culture: that of the urbanised Greenlandic Inuit. Kalak is the second feature of director Isabella Eklöf, whose debut Holiday screened at Motovun.

Coming to Cinehill on the tail of this year’s Cannes is Limonov: The Ballad, a controversial biography of the even more controversial Russian writer portrayed by Ben Whishaw. “The biography of a Soviet beatnik turned Russian radical nationalist is the work of director Kirill Serebrennikov, known to Cinehill audiences as the author of The Student and Leto (Summer). Since his last screening in Motovun, Serebrennikov spent two years under house arrest, defected to the West, and this is his first feature as a political emigree. “The film warns us that the façade of a genuine, rebellious and countercultural artist, may easily hide a poisonous individual”, says Jurica Pavičić.

Among the praise lavishing the films in this year’s program is an award worthy of a dog! The Cannes Palm Dog Award went to Kodi, the pooch staring in Dog on Trial. Swiss-French director Laetitia Dosch tells the story of the first dog on trial, for biting three people. This courtroom comedy with a lively cast raises questions about our relationship with animals.

The most affordable ticket bundles for the films in the main program can be purchased in advance and online, via this link: https://core-event.co/events/cinehill-film-festival-2024-4efa/.  

This year’s Cinehill runs from 24 to 28 July at the Petehovac mountain resort in the mountains above Delnice and in the surrounding towns with the support of the Primorje-Gorski Kotar County, the Tourist Boards of Kvarner and Gorski Kotar, the Croatian Audiovisual Centre, and the City of Delnice.