ZagrebDox

ZagrebDox International Documentary Film Festival

ZagrebDox 2008 masthead
Location	Zagreb, Croatia
Founded	2005
Awards	Veliki pečat Mali pečat
No. of films	104 (2019)
Language	International
Website	www.zagrebdox.net

ZagrebDox is an international documentary film festival taking place in Zagreb every year, in late February / early March. Launched in 2005, the festival is intended to provide audiences and experts insight into recent documentary films, stimulate national documentary production and boost international and regional cooperation in co-productions. ZagrebDox is a specialised festival that presents the best creative documentary films whose imaginative form and choice of topics make it unique in Croatia and Europe.

The festival's competition program has international and regional categories. The international competition presents the best auteur and creative documentary films from the world made and produced in the past year, with a focus on everything that is new, brave, off mainstream and intrepid. The regional competition program consists of the films from Albania, Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Italy, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Slovenia and Serbia. The fact that ZagrebDox lays great stress on the regional program makes it additionally attractive for all those who want to look into the latest regional production.

Besides the competition program, ZagrebDox has a number of non-competition programs – retrospectives and films focused on specific subjects, genres, techniques and aesthetics.

Essential part of the festival is ZagrebDox Pro, a training programme consisting of a preparatory workshop for creative documentary projects in different stages of development and production, a Pitching Forum and individual meetings. The four-day workshop is tailored for professional director/producer teams. In some cases, teams can also be joined by the screenwriter, cinematographer or editor, but a director and/or a producer must be present.

The festival is organised by a Zagreb-based film production company Factum, and is usually held in February. As of 2019, the festival has featured more than 2,000 films, which were seen by approximately 290,000 visitors.

Awards

Prizes are awarded in the following categories:

Official Awards

Big Stamp Award (Veliki pečat) : for Best Film in International Competition Programme

Big Stamp Award (Veliki pečat) : for Best Film in Regional Competition Programme

Little Stamp Award (Mali pečat): for Best Film by a young author of up to 35 years of age

HT Audience Award: for Best Film Audience Choice

Special Awards

Movies that Matter Award: for film that best promotes human rights

Teen Dox Award: for best film about issues concerning the young. The award is given by a special jury consisting of male and female students from a single high school

FIPRESCI Award: or best film in Regional Competition

The award of the International Federation of Film Critics – FIPRESCI Fédération Internationale de la Presse Cinématographique, the oldest and most prestigious film critics association, with members from around fifty countries. The award is of great importance among film authors.

My Generation Award: The award for a film by My Generation filmmaker is an award dedicated to those filmmakers who have, often in a quiet and unassuming manner, achieved great quality of work and whose presence has been crucial to documentary film for years, even decades. The filmmakers without whom there would be no documentary film. Awarded by Nenad Puhovski, the founder and Director of ZagrebDox.

The awards (except the special ones) include a statue and a diploma. The Festival Jury can also award Special Mentions consisting of a diploma.

Award winners

International competition

Year	English title	Original title	Director(s)	Country
2005	The 3 Rooms of Melancholia	Melancholian 3 huonetta	Pirjo Honkasalo	Finland, Denmark, Germany, Sweden
2006	Before Flying Back to Earth	Prieš parskrendant į žemę	Arūnas Matelis	Lithuania, Germany
2007	Civil Status	Grajdanskoe sostoianie	Alina Rudnitskaya	Russia
2008	War/Dance	—	Sean Fine and Andrea Nix Fine	United States
2009	Lady Kul El Arab	ליידי כל אל ערב	Ebtisam Mara’ana	Israel
2010	Petition	Shangfang	Zhao Liang	China, Switzerland, United Kingdom, France, Belgium, Finland
2011	Position Among the Stars	Stand van de Sterren	Leonard Retel Helmrich	Netherlands, Indonesia
2012	Returns	Powroty	Krzysztof Kadlubowski	Poland
2013	Kudzu Vine	—	Josh Gibson	United States
2014	The Last Station	La Última Estación	Cristian Soto and Catalina Vergara	Chile
2015	Virunga	—	Orlando von Einsiedel	United Kingdom, Congo
2016	Poet on a Business Trip	Shi ren chu chai le	Anqi Ju	China
2017	The Dazzling Light of Sunset	—	Salomé Jashi	Georgia, Germany
2018	Of Fathers and Sons	—	Talal Derki	Germany, Syria, Lebanon
2019	Up the Mountain	Huo Shan	Yang Zhang	China

Regional competition

Year	English title	Original title	Director(s)	Country
2005	Images from the Corner	Slike sa ugla	Jasmila Žbanić	Bosnia and Herzegovina, Germany
2006	Totally Personal	Sasvim lično	Nedžad Begović	Bosnia and Herzegovina
2007	Europe Next Door	Evropa preko plota	Želimir Žilnik	Serbia and Montenegro
2008	Weddings and Diapers	Darsmat dhe pampersat	Casey Cooper Johnson and Antoneta Kastrati	Kosovo
2009	The Caviar Connection	Kavijar konekšn	Dragan Nikolić	Serbia
2010	Totò	—	Peter Schreiner	Austria
2011	Trials, Tribulations & Sustainable Growth of a Cock	Život, priključenija i održivi razvoj jednog kokota	Vladimir Perović	Montenegro
2012	A Day on the Drina	Jedan dan na Drini	Ines Tanović	Bosnia and Herzegovina
2013	Tzvetanka	—	Youlian Tabakov	Bulgaria, Sweden
2014	Sacro GRA	—	Gianfranco Rosi	Italy, France
2015	Cain's Children	Káin gyermekei	Marcell Gerö	Hungary, France
2016	4.7	—	Đuro Gavran	Croatia
2017	Depth Two	Dubina dva	Ognjen Glavonić	Serbia
2018	The Other Side of Everything	Druga strana svega	Mila Turajlić	Serbia, France, Qatar
2019	Una primavera	Una primavera	Valentina Primavera	Germany, Austria, Italy

Best Young Director

Year	English title	Original title	Director(s)	Country
2005	Life in Peace	Mirnaya zhizn	Antoine Cattin and Pavel Kostomarov	Switzerland, Russia
2006	The Angelmakers	—	Astrid Bussink	Hungary, Netherlands, United Kingdom
2007	Grandmothers of Revolution	Babice revolucije	Petra Seliškar	Macedonia, Netherlands, Cuba, Slovenia
2008	Audience of One	—	Michael Jacobs	United States
2009	On the Way to School	İki Dil Bir Bavul	Ozgür Dogan and Orhan Eskikoy	Turkey
2010	Chasm	Otchłań	Wojciech Kasperski	Poland
2011	Charcoal Burners	Smolarze	Piotr Zlotorowicz	Poland
2012	The Will	Testamentet	Christian Sønderby Jepsen	Denmark
2013	Turn Off the Lights	Lumea in patratele	Ivana Mladenović	Romania
2014	The Special Need	—	Carlo Zoratti	Germany, Italy, France, Austria
2015	Another Hungary – The Life of a Village – Fragments	Másik Magyarország - Töredékek egy falu hétköznapjaiból	Dénes Nagy	Hungary
2016	Above and Below	—	Nicolas Steiner	Switzerland, Germany, United States
2017	Depth Two	Dubina dva	Ognjen Glavonić	Serbia
2018	Over the Limit	—	Marta Prus	Poland, Germany, Finland
2019	Still Recording	Lissa ammetsajjel	Saeed Al Batal, Ghiath Ayoub	France, Germany, Lebanon, Qatar, Syria

Audience Award

Year	English title	Original title	Director(s)	Country
2005	Direkt (40) Without Dad	Direkt (40) Bez tate	Nebojša Slijepčević	Croatia
	Children of the Decree	Das Experiment 770 - Gebären auf Befehl	Razvan Georgescu and Florin Iepan	Romania, Germany
2006	Wasn't awarded
2007	Blue Blood	—	Stevan Riley	United Kingdom
2008	All White in Barking	—	Marc Isaacs	United Kingdom
2009	The English Surgeon	—	Geoffrey Smith	United Kingdom
2010	People from the Milky Way	Ljudi s mliječnog puta	Miroslav Mikuljan	Croatia
	The Destiny of Line 13	Sudbina broja 13	Irena Škorić
2011	Waste Land	—	Lucy Walker	Brazil, United Kingdom
2012	Family Meals	Nije ti život pjesma Havaja	Dana Budisavljević	Croatia
2013	Gangster of Love	Gangster te voli	Nebojša Slijepčević	Croatia, Germany, Romania
2014	Dear Lastan!	Dragi Lastane!	Irena Škorić	Croatia
2015	I Like That Super Most Best	Lijepo mi je s tobom, znaš	Eva Kraljević	Croatia
2016	Twilight of a Life	Ad ktze ha'zrikha	Sylvain Biegeleisen	Belgium, Israel
2017	The Eagle Huntress	—	Otto Bell	United Kingdom, Mongolia, United States
2018	The Other Side of Everything	Druga strana svega	Mila Turajlić	Serbia, France, Qatar
2019	Neighbors	Susjedi	Tomislav Žaja	Croatia

Lifetime Achievement Award

(The Lifetime Achievement Award (Počasni pečat) was introduced at the 2009 edition, for outstanding contribution to documentary filmmaking)

• Bogdan Žižić (2009)
• Jon Alpert (2009)

Special awards

Apart from the regular categories, the festival sometimes awards special prizes, often related to themes of a particular festival edition.

Year	Award	Film	Director
2006	Best film in the Sports and Music theme program	The Human Hambone	Mark Morgan
2008	International Critics' Jury Award	The Devil Came on Horseback & Audience of One	Ricki Stern & Anne Sundberg Michael Jacobs
2008	Amnesty International Award	All White in Barking	Marc Isaacs
2009	Movies That Matter Award	Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country (Burma VJ: Reporter i et lukket land)	Anders Østergaard
2012	Movies That Matter Award	The Tinniest Place	Tatiana Huezo
2013	Movies That Matter Award	The Act of Killing	Joshua Oppenheimer
2014	Movies That Matter Award	Pipeline (Truba)	Vitaly Mansky
2015	Movies That Matter Award	Rich Hill	Andrew Droz Palermo & Tracy Droz Tragos