From August 24th until the 31st Zadar will become the meeting ground for film enthusiasts and professionals who will have the opportunity to enjoy in interesting film meetings and film titles: new art-house films, first features, documentaries, short films, mainstream titles. The films in the main programme, which consists of films made in the European coproduction, will be rated by a renowned international film jury whose members are: Arta Dobroshi, Krzysztof Zanussi, Shigeru Umebayashi, Dean Šoša and Christian Jeune.

Actress Arta Dobroshi became famous with the film “Le Silence de Lorna” by the Dardenne brothers which won the Palme d’Or in 2008 at the Cannes Film Festival for the best screenplay.
Krzysztof Zanussi is a famous Polish and European film director, and when people are talking about worldwide influences of the Polish cinematography, they will always mention the name of Wajda, Kieslowski and Zanussi. Krzysztof Kieslowski was inspired with Zanussi’s work, and Zanussi had a cameo role in Kieslowski’s film. Zanussi is an artist who was picked by the “Polish Pope” John Paul II as a consultant for AV culture and this is his first visit to Croatia, to the Meadow of John Paul II in Zadar (Forum), to the cinema under the clear bright sky.

Shigeru Umebayashi is a Japanese film composer who created music for numerous Japanese and Chinese film but on the West he is most famous for his work with the director Wong Karwai and music for the films: “In the Mood for Love”, “2046”, “The Grandmaster”. Furthermore “House of Flying Daggers” by Yimou Zhang, together with the Polish composer Korzeniowski he made music for Tom Ford’s “Single Man” (remark: the film’s cinematographer, Eduard Grau, was a guest on the 1st Avvantura Festival Filmforumzadar). He was also hired by Winterbottom for the film “Trishna” and by the German director Veit Helmer (winner of the Audience Award on the last years Avvantura Festival Filmforumzadar for his film “Baikonur”) for his film “Absurdistan”.

Dean Šoša is a film critic, editor and chief editor of the praised “cultural” Third programme of the Croatian Television.
Christian Jeune is the director of the Film section and chief selector for the world’s film festival, the Cannes Film Festival. He is in charge of preselecting and selecting films and he is the one that in the end has to say “NO” to 90% of films which have had the chance to enter Cannes’ official programme. This year, he has watched around 1800 films and rejected 1700 of them, he coordinated 950 film screenings and Variety magazine says that he is the “local hero”.

This jury, consisting of five members, will chose among the best films like “Broken circle breakdown” a festival hit film which was awarded by the audience on the Berlin Film Festival and European cinemas are calling it the best film. It has also won an award for best screenplay and best actress on the Tribeca Film Festival. The film will be shown for the first time in Croatia and the Belgian director Felix Van Groeningen brings an unusual mixture of tears and bluegrass music.

The Icelandic director Baltasar Kormakur, famous outside his homeland and successful in Hollywood, in his new hit “The Deep” brings a story based on a real life event, about a man who spent hours swimming in a frozen sea.

Actress Judita Franković is amongst the jury members which will evaluate film in the 1st and 2nd Film section, German director of South African roots Pia Marais whose film “Layla Fourie” was in the main programme at this year’s Berlinale is a jury member in the Eye on Films section. Eye on Film is a film platform, a business model for promoting, circulation and distribution of first feature films and it has numerous partners: around 40 distributers, 50 festivals (Avvantura Festival is the only one in Croatia) and this programme for opening doors into the film world for unknown authors has developed WIDE, one of the leading European sales agents with the support of the MEDIA Mundus programme.

Short films will also be competing in Zadar, so in cooperation with European Film Academy we are showing the best European short films of the year and in cooperation with the Austrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Austrian Film Academy, the Festival brings the best Austrian short films.

Thanks to a fertile cooperation with the Austrian Cultural Fund in Zagreb, from Austria we are having real film treats in the tribute to one of the leading European and world director, Michael Haneke. On our great pleasure, Austria is Festival’s “Partner country” this year. Within this cooperation, we are having a premiere showing of the film “Soldate Jeanette” by Daniel Hoesel, the winner of the Rotterdam Film Festival (Tiger Award) and we are bringing the film’s crew.

In the programme “Classics at the Adria” we are showing a retrospective of the renowned French director and aesthetician, Robert Bresson (1991-1999).
In its industry section, the Festival is organizing several different workshops and master classes so in cooperation with the Croatian Film Association we are having one of the most esteemed authors from the Zagreb school for animated films, Nedeljko Dragić, director of the awarded “Tup-tup”. During the 60-s, Dragić was in the shortlist for an Oscar and he is the author of the famous character Zagi. Anyone interested can apply for this workshop.

As a Festival which focuses on coproduction, outside of competition, we are also screening interesting titles such as “Hives” by Ivan Kelava, made in coproduction of five European film academies. Documentary Film “Google and the World Brain” puts a difficult question to Google which is preparing a huge but controversial world book, available to all.
“The Stranger” (“Obrana i zaštita”) by Bobo Jelčić is amongst the Croatian titles in the section Made in Croatia. We are very pleased that in the new programme Zadar Film Corner there will be many excitements and surprises, and we will be showing films that were made in the last 12 months: short film, German documentary film, the director Hermann Vaske has filmed a part of his documentary “Balkan Spirit” during his stay at the Festival. Last year, the Festival’s crew brought to the Zadar set the production of one of the most popular Czech TV series “Vypravej” which has 2 million viewers in its homeland. Since the very beginning we are promoting Zadar as a film location and destination, and during the times when even small towns are digitalizing theatres, there is no place in Zadar where you could watch the films like the ones that will be screened during the AVVANTURA FESTIVAL FILMFORUMZADAR.  In the Zadar Film Corner we are hiding a huge surprise, especially for the audience in Zadar.

A week before the projectors are turned on and screens are set up; on Zadar’s locations AVVANTURA is brining Documentary Campus Masterschool with around 50 participants around the world which are developing the selected projects with the support of big film house like: BBC, DISCOVERY CHANNEL, HISTORY CHANNEL, ORF, FRANCE TV, SPIGEL TV, ZDF, SKY VISION and many others. The Campus will be closed pitching and an industry event.
Croatia Goes Cross-Media is a home three day programme in organization of the Aning d.o.o. film production in which the participants have the opportunity to gather knowledge and information from world’s leading experts in the growing area of cross-media to which the Zadar festival is giving a lot of attention since the very beginning.

There will also be a lot of fun in Zadar, we are merging film and kitchen in a theme night called “In the mood for love”, we are also preparing concerts, exhibitions, parties... The complete festival programme will be announced in the beginning of August and all information will be available on the web, Twitter and our Facebook page.
Again this year, as an official partner, the Festival is supported by Fund of the European Council for cinematography support, Eurimages, and the Festival could not be realized without the support of the City of Zadar, general sponsor Croatian Telecom, Croatian Audio-Visual Centre and other partnering institutions.