21st Youth Film Festival and 9th Four River Film Festival ended in Karlovac with the award ceremony
Eighteen awards, as well as two special awards for ‘Pack&Pitch’ and ‘Prodigy Camp’ were awarded on Saturday, September 10th at Zorin Dom in Karlovac. Winners in all categories can expect to cooperate with film professionals Ina Bijelić and Jelena Modrić who will help them create their own medium length film!
Winners
Grand prix and the audience award went to Dominik Čorić and his MMF School team from Bosnia and Herzegovina for the film ‘Bridge’.
Dominik Ćorić
‘One of the hardest things in film is to make people laugh. To make them laugh in a way that everything else doesn’t lose purpose for a film is an incredibly rare skill. Winning film has perfect timed jokes, great chemistry amongst actors and characters that act natural and persuasive no matter how silly they behave, as well as professional level of production. To achieve this at that age in one language is an accomplishment, to do it in two languages is something completely different!’ pointed out Joe Stephenson, member of the adult jury.
Professional jury
Professional jury consisting of Anna Eriksson, Marc Price and Joe Stephenson as well as young jury consisting of 19 members from Great Britain, Macedonia, Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia and America had a really hard job.
'There is 19 of us from all around the world which means many votes and sometimes it was really confusing because we couldn't agree on just one film. Films were high quality which confirms the reputation of the festival', said Domagoj Topić, member of the young jury.
Audience
Besides the Festival and FRFF winners, this year we have winners of special awards. Three lucky participants won round trip tickets for United States of America. Rudolf Ravbar from Kinoklub Karlovac wrote the best script and won over strict mentors of Relativity School during the Pack & Pitch program. He will visit Los Angeles next year within workshop at the Relativity School and will have a chance to develop his idea until the very end.
Rudolf Ravbar
'Thank you for bravery. Those young talents presented us with identity, sexuality, technology and fear stories and they were all amazing. This is why it was hard to chose but criteria according to which we decided was the most creative presentation and the idea that could be used to the fullest at our school' said mark Millhone from Relativity School Program.
'If someone told me 10 years ago that we will be awarding such prizes, I wouldn't believe it. I think that young filmmakers have the extraordinary chance because the winner of Pack and Pitch program will spend three weeks in Los Angeles where he will develop his idea and create a film. Pitching itself in front of the professionals was a great experience, especially for high school students' said Marija Ratković Vidaković, coordinator of Festival and FRFF.
Marija Ratković Vidaković
Judges chose the best anti corruption film while Matija Benić, with his film 'Anticorruption atom' has a short time to pack. In three weeks he will fly out to the Big Apple where he will participate at the Plural+ Film Festival. It was one of the hardest task for the jury to pick the best film in this category because, as they say, the topic itself is hard and they wanted film to be serious and witty at the same time, which they found in the winning film.
Team from Prodigy, talent camp from Seattle which gathers 20 best filmmakers from all over the world, had selected again this year one participant from Karlovac programs. Luka Pisačić will spend 6 days at the northwest of USA learning from the best experts of film industry and creating his new film.
Prodigy Camp
Workshop programs, amazing 19 of them, were more than active thanks to mentors Luka Hrgović, Antonio Britvar, Ora and Paul Kovač, Dalija DOzet, Zoran Šmid, Elena Veličkovski Nikolovski, Darko Nikolovski, Ana Opačić, Tom Vujnović, Staša body painter, Denis Ostrošić, creative duo Šesnić&Turković, Leo Vitasović, Sanja Milardović, Diana Nenadić, Nikola Janković, lecturers from the Relativity School program, Jelena Modrić, Stipe Radić, Boško Picula and Ana Đordić.
Petar Krelja
This is actually tenth edition of Youth Film Festival in Karlovac that was successfully organized by Croatian Film Association and Kinoklub Karlovac which is why almost all past jury members from Croatia joined us on stage. They are animator Vjekoslav Zivković, critics Boško Picula and Diana Nenadić, directors Petar Krelja, Daniel Kušan and Aldo Tardozzi, actor Marinko Leš and director and producer Sanja Šamanović.
Daniel Kušan
Festival is each year getting better and better as well as more yellow. I would say this is the best festival in the world. I hope that you will remain as good in the next ten years’ said Vjekoslav Živković.
Vjekoslav Živković
Sponsors of the Festival and FRFF are Croatian Audiovisual Association, Croatian Association of Technical Culture, City of Karlovac, Karlovac County and City of Karlovac Tourism Board while technical support was given by Karlovac Grammar School, Association of Technical Culture Karlovac and Zorin Dom.
10.09.2016.