– Five feature-length fiction projects, including the sequel to the biggest local hit ever, The Wedding, have received a total of €3,740,000
Director Dana Budisavljević, who has received support for Everything Bends Toward the Sun (© Hulahop)
Last week, the Croatian Audiovisual Centre announced the results of its funding competition for production, project development and script development of feature-length and short fiction films, documentaries and animated projects. A total of €3.74 million will be handed out.
The highest amount in the feature production category, €950,000, went to Igor Šeregi‘s The Wedding 2, the sequel to the highest-grossing Croatian film ever, The Wedding, which sold almost 800,000 admissions to earn a gross BO of €5.6 million, and has also been a big hit in Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. The film is being produced by Eclectica.
One project received funding intended for a debut fiction feature: Goran Ribarić’s Miron in a Tight Spot, based on the children’s novel of the same name by Ante Gradaš. The Lux Film production got €900,000.
Damir Čučić, a director with 28 short, mid-length and feature-length credits to his name across experimental, fiction and documentary formats, such as A Letter to My Father and Summerhouse, and one of Croatia’s busiest editors (most recently, he cut Ivan Ramljak‘s DOK Leipzig and Pula winner Peacemaker), was awarded €750,000 for U svemiru, na ivici svijeta (lit. “In the Cosmos, on the Edge of the World”). His fourth feature, produced through Sve gore i gore, is a docufiction hybrid based on a true story from the Croatian War of Independence.
Another hybrid, Everything Bends Toward the Sun by Dana Budisavljević, received €720,000. Budisavljević scored an unexpected hit with her World War II hybrid The Diary of Diana B, which triumphed at the national Pula Film Festival in 2019, and she now tackles her own family history through the story of four generations succeeding each other in the same flat. It is a Hulahop production.
Finally, Zagreb Stories 4, an anthology directed by Martina Marasović, Jakov Nola, Andrija Mardešić, Luka Galešić, Sara Grgurić and Andrej Korovljev, picks up from a series from Propeler Film that aired its last instalment in 2015. A lot has changed socially, economically and culturally in the Croatian capital in the intervening years, and this is what the six filmmakers will explore in the project, which was awarded €400,000.
All of the funding results across all categories can be found here (in Croatian).
