New cinema and animated films seek to emancipate themselves
The cinema of the 1950s was still bathed in formal classicism. Thus, the films of Branko Bauer, the most famous of which, My Son, Don't Look Back (1956), depicts the difficult reunion of a partisan with his young son indoctrinated by fascist ideology. Nikola Tanhofer's H-8 (1958) prefigures, in its narrative bias, the modernist trend that runs through the 1960s. The spectator, warned at the beginning of the film, sees the protagonists of a road accident heading towards death. A few liberties in the mise-en-scene announce a slight relaxation of the centralist regime. They come from local institutions favorable to experimentation. Coincidentally, in the climate of the time, Orson Welles shot his version of Kafka's Trial in 1962 in Zagreb.
In 1964, Vatroslav Mimica's Prometheus from the Island of Viševica revived the tired theme of war and the partisan by retranscribing the memories of the main character, which flooded back to his memory when he returned to his native island. In 1966, Zvonimir Berković's Rondo is filmed in a sleek black and white, as if inspired by the new novel; the chess game symbolizes the muted war waged by a love triangle behind appearances and civility. In a similar aesthetic, in 1967, Ante Babaja's Breza sets his characters in a rural and gloomy Croatia, still in the grip of archaic customs.
This fertile period was exhausted at the end of the 1960s. We should mention Ante Peterlić's Accidental Life (1969), which follows the idle daily life of young people in Zagreb, and Krešo Golikse's Who sings thinks no evil (1970), one of the most popular films of Croatian cinema, where a new love trio is played out in the nostalgia of Zagreb in the 1930s, bathed in folk songs. Still in 1970, The Handcuffs by Krsto Papić tells how the arrival of two Titist agents disrupts the festive atmosphere of a village wedding. A harsh and dry film like Zagora, the region where it was shot. The story looks back at the events of the post-war period and prefigures, on the screen, the internal quarrels that will later put Yugoslavia to fire and blood. His second film, Representation of Hamlet in the Village (1972), is a lighter satire of the compromises of power.
At the same time, in the 1950s, Croatian animation cinema sought to free itself from communist censorship. The Zagreb school contributed to establishing the specificity of the genre. Its fame culminated in 1961, when Dušan Vukotić won the Oscar in its category with Succédané. For the first time, this award was given to a non-American director. Another prominent representative of these studios, Vatroslav Mimica, whose career navigates between animated shorts and live-action feature films.
In 1978, Lordan Zafranović's The Occupation in 26 Pictures shows how the idyllic daily life of three friends from different backgrounds in Dubrovnik is turned upside down by the war. A terrible scene condenses the exactions of the oustachis.
In the 1980s, support for production declined. Croatian filmmakers suffer from the fierce competition of television. In 1982, Rajko Grlić's romantic film, You Only Love Once, was nevertheless selected for Cannes. It will be a milestone in the history of Croatian cinema. Other Croatian directors, such as Zoran Tadić, try to adapt an American-inspired genre cinema to the communist context that is about to collapse. In 1991, the last war of independence, which caused the dismantling of Yugoslavia, plunged Croatian cinema into a deep crisis.
Ghosts of the past and cinema of the real
After the last war, filmmakers were inevitably scarred, even traumatized, giving the impression of evolving without distance from social-communism to inter-community conflicts, from autocracy to a precarious democracy. Vinko Bresan's film Comment la guerre a commencé sur mon île (1996) ( How the war started on my island) was a great national success. On the eve of the year 2000, a new generation emerges. Dalibor Matanić's Fine Dead Girls (2002) features a lesbian couple facing intolerance from their neighbors. A Wonderful Night in Split by Arsen-Anton Ostojić (2004) presents a new image of the port city, dissipated, interloped, with the funny adventures of a drug dealer. Ostojić also distinguished himself in Le Chemin d'Halima (2012), spawning on the Serbian-Bosnian side of the war. Branko Schmidt's Métastases (2009) is a kind of social chronicle, following the chaotic itinerary of three Dinamo Zagreb hooligans addicted to drugs and alcohol.
Recent years have seen a revival in co-production, a sign of pacified relations between neighboring countries and of European - especially German - co-financing. But it takes time for these films to reach us. We had to wait four years for Quiet People, un jour à Zagreb by Ognjen Svilicić (2014) to be released in France. The series Novine or The Paper (2016) kept the Balkans on its toes before becoming Netflix's first Slavic-language import: the barely fictionalized story of an independent newspaper in Rijeka bought out by a mafia-like businessman serves as a pitch into the arcana of politics and corruption.
In 2018, Uspjeh(Success in French), the first Croatian series produced by the European subsidiary of the American channel HBO, is written by Marjan Alčevski. Six episodes shot in Zagreb, directed by Bosnian Danis Tanovič. In the same year, Ivan Salaj's comedy The Eigth Commissioner shows the return to nature and moral conversion of a crooked politician, forced into exile on Vis, that long-distant Adriatic island. Its island setting also serves as the backdrop for Nevio Marasović's Comic Sans (2018), which echoes the environmental anxieties of contemporary society to which is added the theme of complicated relations between communities in border countries. The feature film Dara iz Jasenovca (2020) by director Peter Antonijević rekindles tensions between Serbs and Croats. A film about the atrocities committed during the Second World War in the Jasenovac concentration camp.
The same year, German director Josef Rusnak returns with a crime thriller, Dans la gueule du loup. Shot in Berlin, the film opens with the murder of the son of wealthy immigrants. The investigation takes in the Croatian diaspora and the Eastern European mafia. The film stars the impressive Stipe Erceg, the rare Croatian actor to break through in Western Europe.
At the same time, the country is becoming an open-air studio, attracting blockbusters from all over the world, which seems to go hand in hand with the country's new-found fortune in tourism. Stays and tours are now offered through the natural sites, historic centers and monuments that have served as backdrops for the Game of Thrones series. First and foremost, Dubrovnik, where the final season of the Borgias was also filmed. The Adriatic coastline, its geographical proximity to Croatia, and advantageous costs attract European producers, such as Jérôme Salle for L'Odyssée, a biopic dedicated to Cousteau in 2016, or Marion Hänsel's En amont du fleuve (2017), set in the gorges of the Krka River National Park. Much more comic, Dalibor Matanic's social miniseries The Last Socialist Artefact returns to a Balkan ghost town (2017). Selected for the 2021 Oscars, in the midst of the Covid crisis, Dalibor Bari's feature film is a surprise. His animated film Luxuriance accidentelle du rébus aqueux translucide tells the story of a couple's revolt against an Orwellian system of oppression. Social again with the miniseries The Last Socialist Artefact (2017), which evokes the reopening of a factory in a ghost town and the values of teamwork. The six episodes won awards at the Series Mania festival in 2021.
From the 2020s onwards, women asserted themselves in front of and behind the camera. Croatian women directors often come from the diaspora, like Vida Skerk, who lives in Trieste, promising with her short films, The WC (2017) and especially Night Ride (Nocna voznja) in 2022. Barbara Vekarić's comedy-drama Aleski (2018) follows the adventures of an impulsive girl from Zagreb who dreams only of Europe. Mother and Daughter (Mater Croatia), Jure Pavlović's first feature film (2021), is an uncompromising portrait of this filial relationship. Andrea Staka's Mare describes a stay-at-home mother's desperate thirst for freedom; Dora Šustić's series Maličke, winner of the HBO Europe Award for Best Project, follows the struggle of a young woman at a time of anti-abortion movements. In 2021, Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović, with her film Murina, won the Caméra d'or at Cannes and, in April 2022, the award for Best Balkan Film at the Sofia International Film Festival. This is the first time a Croatian feature film has won such an award. Critics praised the mastery of the direction, touched by the story of the young fisherwoman Julija, who seeks to escape her tyrannical father and her narrow life on the island. In a European co-production, Anja Kofmel's animated film Chris the Swiss (2018) made a lasting impression. The director recalls the death of her cousin, a Swiss journalist murdered in Croatia during the fighting of the last war.
In 2023, at the PriMed festival (Marseille), directors Vedrana Pribaćić and Mirta Puhlovski were awarded the Mediterranean Stakes Grand Prize for Bigger than trauma, a poignant documentary shot in Vukovar. This gives hope to Croatian filmmakers seeking European and even international recognition. In 2023,
In a completely different register, Vanessa Jopp's German romantic comedy Loin d'ici (Faraway) is a feel-good movie produced by Netflix (2023) and tailor-made to make you dream of the next vacation. It is one in a long series of films shot in the magnificent island landscapes of the Adriatic.
