Workshop: My First Script

After the successful first edition of My First Script Workshop that took place last year, Zagreb Film Festival goes on promoting the practical aspects of film production by turning the workshop into a permanent component of its Industry program. The workshop aims at enabling its participants to work actively on their own scripts under guidance of two excellent mentors (script doctors). From the applications for participation in the workshop received from all over the world, our commission has selected six proposed script projects of young filmmakers (see below). All of them are authors or co-authors of short, documentary or animated films and are now working on their first feature-length film scripts.

Joining us this year as mentors will be the last year's script doctor Srđan Koljević and a new ZFF script doctor, Pjer Žalica. Both of them are experienced and multiply awarded scriptwriters and directors. They also teach at the Belgrade Faculty of Dramatic Arts and Sarajevo Academy of Performing Arts, respectively. The networking and making new acquaintances with young filmmakers (two of them from Croatia and the remaining four from four other European countries) is a prerequisite for one of the basic ideas behind the Zagreb Film Festival's Industry Program: bringing young professionals together, educating them and supporting their projects in the making at the same time, hoping that these projects will some day be screened at ZFF and other film festivals.

Script Doctors

Scriptwriter Srđan Koljević was born in Sarajevo in 1966. He graduated in Dramaturgy from the Academy in Belgrade where he teaches today. His first script that was turned into a film was Tell Me Why You Left Me, a 1993 generation movie directed by Oleg Novković. In the 1990s he worked mostly for Gorčin Stojanović (Premeditated Murder, 1996; Hornet, 1998), but also for Ljubiša Samardžić (Sky Hook, 1999 and Natasha, 2000; Bareground, 2005 ‒ as Assistant Director). He also directed the awarded road movie The Red Colored Gray Truck (2003) ‒ a film about a seemingly impossible relationship of a Bosnian color-blind man and a Belgrade snappy dresser. In 2007 he wrote a script for Srdan Golubović’s crime story The Trap, which achieved great international acclaim and was awarded at numerous international festivals. Srđan Koljević is one of the most prominent scriptwriters in Serbian cinema. 

Pjer Žalica was born in 1964 in Sarajevo. He graduated from the Department of Directing at the Academy of Performing Arts in Sarajevo, where he now teaches directing and is the dean of academic affairs. He has lectured at various academic institutions in Europe and the US. Žalica is one of the partners in the Refresh production company. He is the author and director of various TV shows, series, commercials, music and promotional videos, as well as a number of theatre plays, shorts, documentaries (Mostar Sevdah Reunion, A Slave) and two feature length films: Fuse, Days and Hours, Orchestra. He has produced several shorts and one feature film. He has received various local and international awards. He is a member of the European Film Academy and the Supervisory Board of the Sarajevo Film Centre.

Participants and projects:

A Day Off
Andreea Cristina Bortun (Romania) 

The Load
Ognjen Glavonić (Serbia) 

Alone
Paolo Nepi (Italy) 

The Staff Room
Sonja Tarokić (Croatia) 

Retro Paradise
Katarína Uhrová (Czech Republic) 

Garbura 
Josip Žuvan (Croatia)