Program of Industry, ZFF’s platform for education and networking of film experts in the region, once again brings numerous lectures, workshops, masterclasses, panel discussions, round tables and pitching forums aimed at audiences of all ages, interests and levels of expertise, from school children to experienced film professionals. That is why ZFF brings some of the most prominent and esteemed film experts year in year out in order to take part in the festival’s educational programs and support new talent and the development of regional cinematography in general.

Masterclasses by Cristiano Travaglioli, the editor of Paolo Sorrentino’s masterpieces, and Zlatko Burić Kićo, famous Croatian actor living in Denmark

Among the guest lecturers of this year’s anniversary festival edition, the name of Cristiano Travaglioli, the editor behind the visual masterpieces of the great Italian director Paolo Sorrentino, stands out. The winner of the European Film Award will talk about his experience of working on movies such as The Great Beauty, Youth, The Hand of God, as well as on the Netflix series The Young Pope. The lecture is organized in collaboration with the Italian Cultural Institute and the Croatian Film Editors’ Guild.

Cristiano Travaglioli’s lecture will be moderated by awarded Croatian editors Vladimir Gojun and Tomislav Pavlic, who will also hold a workshop within Industry on creating film trailers. During the course of five days, these experienced editors will mentor young professionals in making film trailers, a form extremely important for the film’s promotion and marketing. The workshop will be organized in collaboration with the newly-established  Croatian Film Editors’ Guild and the Academy of Dramatic Art in Zagreb.

The famous Croatian-Danish actor – Zlatko Burić Kićo (Pusher, Dirty Pretty Things, Quit Staring at My Plate) will also hold a masterclass at the anniversary edition of Industry. Burić’s latest acting achievement, Rubena Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness, which won the Palme d’Or, will be screened out of competition of ZFF’s Main program.

Burić will talk about his acting career, its beginnings, experiences of working in theater and on film, the differences of working on smaller, independent, and large productions, as well as his work process, his personal and professional inspirations and life choices. After the lecture, there will be a screening of his film Pusher from 1996 by director Nicolas Winding Refn. The lecture is organized in collaboration with the Embassy of the Kingdom of Denmark.

The secret weapons of film marketing and storytelling in videogames

A lecture, Marketing Is Your Friend, about the challenges of film marketing in the digital age, will be held in cooperation with the RE-ACT platform and the Croatian Audiovisual Centre. Italian experts Alessandro Groppiero and Christine Pelekani will explain how to successfully promote a film and set it apart from others and will offer producers tools for successful promotion and positioning of films in the digital market.

Jack Gutmann, a Syrian multi-media artist, after his own experience of escaping war torn Syria, created the video-game Path Out, supported by the Austrian UNHCR. Gutmann will share his experience of working on the project in the lecture Storytelling in Video Games as a Way of Dealing with Trauma and will explain how videogames can empower empathy towards refugees, as well as how the game reached the mainstream audience despite a modest budget. The lecture is being held in cooperation with the Austrian Cultural Forum and the Academy of Dramatic Art in Zagreb.

Industry also brings a special event CREATIVE EUROPE MEDIA DESK DAY: KNOW YOUR NEIGHBOUR! – our (non)organic collaborations! organized by Creative Europe Desk – MEDIA Office from Croatia, Bulgaria, Greece, and Serbia, and ZFF, with focus on cross-border collaboration, organized within the content cluster of the new program period Creative MEDIA 2021 – 2027. Also, in collaboration with Torino Film Lab & Green Film Lab (Italy), Creative Europe Desk – Offices from Bulgaria, Greece, Croatia, and Serbia will present environmentally sustainable practices in film production and teach film professionals how to apply the green protocol and best modern practices regarding energy savings, transport, accommodation, catering, set design, waste management, recycling, and communication. Both events will be moderated by the head of Creative Europe Desk – MEDIA Office Croatia Martina Petrović.

Workshops

The workshop programs are the main segment of Industry, so the educational and practical sessions aimed at almost all ages continue again this year. A new edition of the long-standing workshop My First Script will beorganized in collaboration with the Croatian Film Directors’ Guild and led by directors Pjer Žalica and Antonio Nuić, and students of film academies from the region will once again gather in the program Industry Youth!, where they will develop their short feature films in intensive workshops and present them to an international jury at the pitching open to the public. Schoolchildren will learn about creating videogames at the workshop My First Videogame, while film lovers aged 54+ will review films from the program Network of Festivals in the Adriatic Region.

Festivals in the Spotlight program presents films which were selected for the ZFF by the festival directors and selectors of a number of European film festivals, from Sarajevo Film Festival, Mediterranean Film Festival Split, Riga Film Festival, Locarno Film Festival and the International Short Film Festival Vienna Shorts.