Awarded films and workshops by jury members.
The festival juries will not have an easy task selecting winners among so many films awarded at major international festivals. So let us introduce to you our three juries.
The winner of the main competition program (12 films) will be selected by the main jury consisting of the last year’s laureate of Propeller of Motovun Ninja Thyberg, Polish director/actor Piotr Domalewski and US-based Croatian filmmaker Goran Dukić. While they are busy passing judgements on the films of the main program, the visitors will be able to pass their judgements on the jury members’ own films! The latest film by Goran Dukić will be shown in the main program out of competition. This newest film by the author of the favorite Croatian short film Mirta Learns Statistics and the now legendary Wristcutters: A Love Story (a bizarre drama-comedy about suicides who end up in a strange kind of purgatory) confirms Dukić’s love for the unexpected. Even Pigs Go to Heaven is a musical about Croatia’s Zagorje province, written by Sandra Antolić. The narration is provided by animated Jesus Christ and the plot is focused on the love life of a pig called Beba.
The last year’s winner of Motovun, Pleasure by Ninja Thyberg, takes us to the heart of the US porn industry. Based on the eponymous short film that won Canal Plus Award at the Critics’ Week in Cannes, Pleasure premiered at Sundance. If offers a very humane and humoristic perception of a predominantly man’s world from a woman’s perspective.
I Never Cry, a film by the awarded director, screenwriter and actor Piotr Domalewski was shown in Motovun last year. Those who missed it will have another chance to see it this year. The plot revolves around Polish teenager Ola who travels to Ireland after sudden death of her father to return his body to Poland. But the only thing Ola is thinking about is the car that her estranged father promised her for her 18th birthday.
The winner of the Motovun Shorts program will be selected by: Jing Haase from Swedish Film Institute, Andrej Korovljev, Croatian filmmaker and short-program co-selector until recently, and Mo Harawe, an Austrian-Somali filmmaker. Motovun audiences know Korovljev by his very popular musical documentary Tusta about Branko Črnec Tusta, the great front man of the ex-Yugoslav punk-rock scene. Mo Harawe’s work will be represented with two films in Austrian Shorts program: Life on the Horn, which premiered in Locarno, and Will My Parents Come to See Me, made exclusively with amateur actors – quite a radical achievement. The film premiered at this year’s Berlinale. The author will share his experience at Short Film Production: Mission Impossible workshop.
The FIPRESCI Award is given by the jury made up of members of the International Federation of Film Critics: Midhat Ajanović, Tim Lindemann and Marko Stojiljković. While we’re at it, make sure no to miss a workshop on the dream-like absurd aesthetics of Roy Anderson, conducted by the filmmaker and film theoretician Midhat Ajanović: The Aesthetics of Roy Anderson’s Long Shot.