Wednesday, 22 July, brings a wealth of titles competing for the Cinehill Propeller, encounters with filmmakers, student films, and international festival hits. The day starts next to Lepenica Lake with a morning workout session led by Darko Pirc, while at Cinema Mak we’re hosting the DHFA Campus, an industry training program presenting student works from Belgrade’s SAE Institute and Zagreb’s Academy of Dramatic Art.
Wednesday, 22 July, brings a wealth of titles competing for the Cinehill Propeller, encounters with filmmakers, student films, and international festival hits. The day starts next to Lepenica Lake with a morning workout session led by Darko Pirc, while at Cinema Mak we’re hosting the DHFA Campus, an industry training program presenting student works from Belgrade’s SAE Institute and Zagreb’s Academy of Dramatic Art.
The Main Competition kicks off at 11:00 simultaneously at two cinemas. Cinema Bauer will be screening the crime drama The Meltdown by Manuela Martelli, in which a nine-year-old girl confronts the disappearance of a woman she befriended.
At the same time, Cinema Golik will present A Man of His Time by Emmanuel Marre. In this Cannes laureate for Best Screenplay, Henri Marre climbs the political ladder in collaborationist Vichy brazenly courting the newly established order, while his ambition gradually reveals itself as an attempt at personal salvation.
At 13:00, at Cinema Bauer, catch the French dramedy Shana by Lila Pinell, in which the spirited titular character and her colourful group of friends navigate the fallout from her manipulative partner’s release from prison. At 13:30, at Cinema Mak, tune in to select the best film score among the sixty-six compositions written for animated films in development.
At 14:00, head over to Cinema Golik for the screening of Hen by Hungarian director György Pálfi, in which the eponymous hen escapes from an industrial farm only to take shelter in the courtyard of a restaurant entangled in a people-smuggling network.
The next title in the Main Competition, Flies by Fernando Eimbcke, screens at Cinema Bauer at 15:00. When the solitary Olga takes in a lodger due to financial difficulties, her unlikely friendship with his young son gradually brings together three previously disconnected people.
At 15:30, we’re in for the first block of short films in the Cinecorto program at Cinema Mak. While at 17:00, film critic and Cinehill selector Jurica Pavičić chairs the panel How to Make a Regional Hit?, in which leading regional filmmakers and industry professionals – Vinko Brešan, Snežana van Houwelingen, Sanja Jovanović, Aleš Pavlin, Rea Rajčić, Igor Šeregi, Miroljub Vučković, and Chris Marcich – debate whether it is possible to predict in advance the film that will attract a wide audience.
At the same time, Cinema Golik is screening this year’s Maverick Award honouree Edward Berger’s anti-war epic All Quiet on the Western Front, in which a 17-year-old and his friends on the First World War front face the brutality of trench warfare and loss of youthful ideals.
At 18:00, at Cinema Bauer, catch the thriller The Tigers by Alberto Rodríguez, in which a brother-and-sister diving duo discover a hidden shipment of cocaine in a sunken ship’s hull.
The Montenegrin program opens at 18:30, at Cinema Mak, with Senad Šahmanović’s documentary Vud, You Won!, which draws on testimonies from his family, friends, and colleagues to portray the life of Dušan Vukotić, the only Yugoslav Oscar winner, followed by a screening of his cult short The Substitute.
The evening program at 20:30 in Rakov Jarak kicks off with a bonfire and a chance for festival guests and the audience to meet and get to know each other.
At 21:00, at the Damside Theatre, Zijah Sokolović receives his lifetime achievement award, the 50 Years Award, followed by a screening of the satire The Charm of Bureaucracy, and the drama Honey Bunny by Igor Jelinović. The titular character Koke has spent years caring for her family, yet feels her sacrifices have gone unrecognised. When she secretly buys the family house, a family get-together reopens a string of old wounds and grievances.
Screening out of competition at Cinema Bauer, at 21:30, is this year’s Cannes Grand Prix winner, Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Minotaur. In a contemporary and politically charged reworking of Chabrol’s La femme infidèle, Russian power broker Gleb resorts to increasingly violent means in his attempt to stay in control of his life shaped by the consequences of the aggression against Ukraine and his wife’s infidelity.
The day in Rakov Jarak closes with music – a concert by the cult Split satirist and rapper Vojko V, followed by the set of DJ Wariwo.
