ZAGREB: Over 300 artists, mainly musicians and film workers, got vaccinated in a campaign initiated by the Croatian Ministry of Culture and Media and the Croatian Institute for Public Health. The vaccination took place in the Croatian Music Institute in Zagreb and is expected to be the first in a series of similar actions, intended to boost audiovisual production and to restart larger-scale cultural events in Croatia.
PULA: Dutch director Jacqueline Van Vugt started filming her debut feature Crossing in Pula on 5 May 2021. The film, coproduced by Revolver Films (the Netherlands), A Private View (Belgium) and Nukleus film (Croatia), is set in the Mediterranean Sea, but the filming will be done in Croatia. Tax rebates are provided through the Filming in Croatia programme.
ZAGREB: The legendary Croatian film director/scriptwriter Bogdan Žižić died aged 86. He was one of the nation's most prominent authors for decades, helming over 100 short and documentary films.
ZAGREB: Six titles have been selected for the Feature Film Competition of the 31st World Festival of Animated Film - Animafest Zagreb, which will be held 7 - 12 June 2021. Last year Animafest was one of the very few Croatian festivals that managed to host a live audience in the Cinema SC, and the organisers are planning a new offline edition, if the circumstances allow.
RIJEKA: International film crews are flocking back to Croatia with at least eight new foreign projects expected until the end of 2021, after a year of delays due to the pandemic. One of the projects is the Netflix gangster series Clark directed by Jonas Åkerlund and starring young Hollywood star Bill Skarsgård, which is currently shooting in Croatia.
ZAGREB: The Cold War spy classic The Ipcress File, based on Len Deighton's novel and first adapted for the screen in 1965, is being transformed into a new TV series produced by Altitude Television and ITV Studios, which started shooting in Zagreb on 22 April 2021. This is the biggest international production to arrive in Croatia in 2021, after a year marked by COVID-19 restrictions.
ZAGREB: The Sarajevo Film Festival (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Zagreb Film Festival (Croatia), Auteur Film Festival (Serbia) and Herceg Novi - Montenegro Film Festival (Montenegro) are launching the first spring edition of a regional online festival on 9 April 2021. The festival is part of the Network of Festivals in the Adriatic Region and is available on the VOD platform ondemand.kinomeetingpoint.ba.
ZAGREB: The 12th session of the Croatian Audiovisual Council awarded five minority coproduction grants totaling 2,100,000 HRK / 277,200 EUR.
ZAGREB: Playwright Pavo Marinković has been appointed artistic director of the Pula Film Festival, the Croatian Ministry of Culture and Media announced on Wednesday.
ZAGREB: The total gross of Croatian cinemas dropped from 21.1 m EUR in 2019 to only 5.9 m EUR in 2020, due to lockdowns. Box office for Croatian films plummeted from 1 m EUR in 2019 to 77,600 EUR in 2020, even though the number of domestic releases dropped only slightly, from 22 in 2019 to 19 releases in 2020.
