Tuesday, 21 July brings four feature films to this year’s Cinehill program, a chance to have our selectors put together a personalised screening line-up tailored to your taste, and the traditional bonfire lighting ahead of the opening ceremony – where we cast our worries into the flames and decide how we want to spend the week ahead.
Cinehill’s daytime program at Cinema Bauer opens at 13:00 with a screening of this year’s box-office hit The Wedding by director Igor Šeregi. The film follows the fallout after the daughter of a corrupt Croatian businessman (Rene Bitorajac) and the son of a snobbish Serbian minister (Dragan Bjelogrlić) decide to marry following her unplanned pregnancy. The meeting of the two families – new-money Croatian nouveaux riches and the Serbian urban elite – escalates into a politically charged clash that upends the tropes of romantic comedy. On Wednesday, Šeregi will discuss the film’s shrewd use of cultural clichés, genre subversions, and the particular dynamics of regional hits at the panel “How to Make a Regional Hit?”
At 15:00, Cinema Bauer hosts the week’s first screening of Mother, a drama by director Teona Strugar Mitevska, which had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival. Noomi Rapace plays a young Mother Teresa, waiting in Kolkata for permission to leave the Loreto Order and found her own religious community. As she pursues her goal, she must ask herself whether her decision arises from faith or from personal ambition and dissatisfaction with being merely a follower. This fictional inversion of the untouchable saintly persona is Strugar Mitevska contender for the festival’s top prize, the Cinehill Propeller.
Festival goers who are still unsure which films from our rich program might appeal to their taste are welcome to attend our selectors’ recommendations session at Rakov Jarak at 17:00. Festival Director Igor Mirković, main competition selectors Milena Zajović and Jurica Pavičić, and selector Valentina Lisak will present this year’s titles and recommend films to tickle your fancy. Like the festival program itself, the conversation will span a range of genres and themes – from stylised crime thrillers and allegorical political dramas to dramedies about the lives of millennials.
At 18:00, head back to Cinema Bauer for the week’s first screening of The Sea by Israeli director Shai Carmeli-Pollak. Despite winning numerous awards, this drama featuring a realistic portrayal of the Israeli military drew an angry response from the authorities. It is a story of a 12-year-old Palestinian boy, Khaled, looking forward to a school trip that will take him to the sea for the first time in his life. Israeli soldiers stop him at the border crossing due to an invalid permit and separate him from his classmates, but Khaled sets off alone towards the coast, while his father Ribhi – an undocumented worker – goes after him, risking his own arrest. At the Israeli Ophir Awards, the film took prizes for best film, screenplay, lead actor, supporting actor, and original score – a sweep that did not prevent Israel’s Ministry of Culture from interfering.
The evening portion of the program at 20:30 in Rakov Jarak opens with the traditional Opening Bonfire. Festival attendees will cast slips of paper bearing the troubles they wish to set aside for the week, as well as the hopes for a formative cinematic experience – into the flames – before the program continues with the official opening ceremony at Cinema Bauer.
At 21:00, the festival officially opens at Cinema Bauer with a screening of the Polish title The Altar Boys by Piotr Domalewski. A blend of coming-of-age drama and anti-clerical comedy, the film follows a group of teenage altar boys. Disillusioned by the hypocrisy of the Church and the apathy of adults, they begin stealing church money and distributing it to those in need. Their attempt to establish their own system of justice soon confronts them with questions about who truly needs help, how it should be distributed, and whether their ideals can survive in the real world. To great audience enthusiasm, The Altar Boys won both best film and the audience award at the Polish Film Festival in Gdynia.
Tuesday’s program closes with a concert by Svebor Mihael Jelić, an artist that domestic audiences know as the director of hit feature films Zagreb Equinox and Trouble. Following his film directing studies in Vienna under Michael Haneke, Svebor temporarily substitutes his film reels for music tracks. At 23:30 in Rakov Jarak, he will perform a live set combining electric violin, looping, and techno beats. From 01:00, the party continues with Felver, a DJ regarded as one of the pioneers of Croatia’s domestic electronic scene. Despite more than thirty years in the business, Felver’s eclectic interweaving of eighties rhythms, new wave, dark disco, and new beat proves an artist intimately acquainted with innovation.
