Considered the oldest national film festival in the world, the 70th Pula Film Festival will be held from July 15thto 22nd. This year there are 80 films on the programme, including 14 Croatian features in competition.
In the competitive category there are 11 fiction features, 2 documentaries and an animated film. The film opening the festival, Andrej Korovljev’s Hotel Pula, is about a Bosnian refugee living in the Hotel Pula, which was used as a reception centre during the war. Also focused on the war, Vedrana Pribačić’s documentary Bigger Than Trauma shows the healing programme for a group of women tortured and raped during the war in Croatia. The second documentary in this selection, Elvis Lenić’s Ship, focuses on the immense Pula shipyard, now abandoned.
In addition to the competition, the event offers selections of student productions, working-class films and films produced in the Mediterranean region and Eastern Europe.
Artistic director Danijel Pek explained that this year “half Croatia’s new productions have chosen the festival for their preview.” He hopes the event will make Pula “an important starting point for distributing national films.” This is why, for the first time, the Kino Mreža Award will be given to one of the films in the programme – it guarantees the winning film will be distributed across the national network of independent cinemas.
Sources: Pula Film Festival, Film New Europe
