SAFE PLACE, the winning film of last year's FilmFestival Cottbus, won several awards at the national Croatian film festival in the Istrian port city of Pula. Director Juraj Lerotić was awarded Best Director, Goran Marković Best Actor and Marko Brdar Best Cinematographer.
With the award for Best Actress in the Competition for Croatian Minority Productions - to Ksenia Marinković, another prize went to an FFC film. Marinković stars in the Serbian-Croatian HAVE YOU SEEN THIS WOMAN? which also screened in the FFC International Competition in 2022.
The Pula Film Festival took place for the 70th time this year. It was founded as a festival in which films from all the then constituent republics of Yugoslavia competed with and against each other; state president and film lover Tito was one of the regular guests. Since Croatia's independence, it has been the most important national film festival. The films are screened in the unique European ambience of the "Arena", an amphitheatre from Roman times, after which the main prizes - the "Golden Arenas" - are named. The festival is complemented by a supporting programme with international and regional productions and an industry meeting.
Already in mid-July, two more old FFC acquaintances won prizes at another film festival in Southeast Europe: at the "Cinedays" in Skopje in Northern Macedonia, Sophie Linnenbaum, FFC trailer director of 2015, won the top prize in the international competition with her feature film debut THE ORDINARIES. The distopic musical, a graduation film from the Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf, has already won several awards. Szilárd Bernath's LARRY, FFC Youth Film Competition winner of 2022, won the Film Critics Award in Skopje.