1. How do you see short film? What does it mean to you?

It is a kind of film in which you can play as much as you like or want. You can explore and try out new ideas. You can open a small window into someone else’s world, which, if it is an interesting one, can often leave a deep impression, just like a feature film.

2. Why does short film matter? What are its greatest strengths and virtues?

In a short film, the authors can explore and discover stories that are interesting to them, they can find ways of telling those stories, learn how to attract the audience’s attention and in a short amount of time, present a thought or an idea.

3. What is your favorite short film and why?

I cannot decide on just one so I will name three. Stay, Away directed by Paloma Aguilera Valdebenito, Maryna Roshchyna’s In joy and Terrarium by Hana Jušić. Those are the three short films that I have watched many times and that I often come back to. They left and impression on me as a screenwriter and a director. The atmospheres these films managed to create stayed with me for a long time after I had seen them. In each of those three films, I found something that inspired me and something I would like to gravitate towards as an author.

4. Your film Forest, which was your Film and TV Directing BA graduation project at the Academy of Dramatic Art in Zagreb, won the Golden Pram for Best Short Film in the Checkers program at this year’s Zagreb Film Festival. Congratulations!

What does this recognition mean for you personally and what does it mean for you as a director? What were the reactions of the people around you?

Thank you so much. I remember when I first moved to Zagreb and my first time going to the Checkers program at Tuškanac cinema. Right away, I knew that at some point in the future I would like to make a film that will be screened there. The atmosphere at Checkers, especially during the Zagreb Film Festival, is something that I’m sure every young film maker would like to experience and also to have their short films shown in the program. Watching the films at Checkers, I was always amazed by how supportive everyone was with each other. The people in the audience wanted to get an extra ticket even if it meant queuing for hours before the screening… This year, unfortunately, the program had to be transferred online, but since we won I can’t complain too much. I think that Checkers really is an excellent place for young filmmakers to meet and to see some of the best short films. For me as a director, this recognition is a confirmation of how hard I worked on this film, along with the entire crew.

5. The Checkers jury statement said: An intimate portrait of love between two young people, who in their search for themselves, lose their relationship. This film awakens something special in us by means of natural and subtle acting performances, unimposing aesthetics that draw us into the film’s emotional universe and its need to articulate and show personal emotions.

How did you come up with the film’s theme? How did you chose the actors and Gorski Kotar as the location?

In the beginning, I wrote a completely different screenplay for Forest and I wanted it to be my graduation project, but then the pandemic and the lockdown happened. It was almost impossible to shoot the first idea. During the lockdown, I decided to make the best of the situation and started thinking of a new story. Leading actors Lana Meniga and Josip Ledina, cinematographer Frane Pamić, producer Mihael Šandro and I were spending a lot of time together and it occurred to me that it would be great to shoot a film with them in a private atmosphere and also to come up with the story together with them. Gorski Kotar was my first option since it is where my grandfather was born and he has a house there that was ideal for shooting. So, I had two actors, the location and the idea of making some sort of a love story. Every now and then, I talked to Josip and Lana and had new ideas for them and they would say what they thought about them. We researched them together and tried out different alternatives. Frane and I went location scouting beforehand. We had a definite screenplay and we used the locations to think about the atmosphere we wanted to create so I could then, with Lana and Josip, develop the characters in that direction. Zvonimir Jurić also helped me a great deal and he gave me a lot of support in this way of filmmaking. It was great working with him.

6. You made the film during the pandemic. How did this social situation affect the theme of the film and how much did it affect the preparation and production?

The situation certainly affected the theme of the film. At the start, I decided on having only two actors, friends that I knew I could count on for as long as the project lasted. And for the parts of the film that reference the pandemic, it seemed convenient and fun to have them come to Gorski Kotar because all of us went through the lockdown recently and it affected us on an emotional level.

The pandemic actually benefited us in terms of production – I had a film crew at my disposal almost the entire time I was preparing the film. I could take my time and decide what exactly I wanted to do and to try out different options beforehand.

7. You shot it on film tape using the Aaton XTR camera. How and why did you decide to do this? Did shooting on film present a challenge?

Our first idea was to shoot the film in Gorski Kotar, but we soon realized that we have a decent budget that we will not use because of the terms we set for ourselves. I had never shot on film and it seemed like a wish that would never come true. At the start, we joked about shooting on film because it seemed like something fun to try. After Mihael Šandro researched the financial side of it, suddenly this idea did not seem that impossible any more.

Since nobody on the crew had shot on film before, it seemed like an excellent challenge for everyone and the kind of work we could learn a lot from. We assumed that shooting the film in Gorski Kotar would create the ideal atmosphere as well as the relationship between the characters, but no one was sure what the end result would be. We decided to do it because we were curious and the pandemic was going on, so we had nothing to lose and we could get so much from it. We researched the cameras available in Croatia and went to Antitalent to talk about the idea of shooting on film. They welcomed us with open arms, showed us everything that interested us and supplied us with the equipment we would use on the film. Suddenly, from a guerilla project the film turned into a serious student level production so we had to ask our potential sponsors for more money. With the money we collected we bought a little less than two hours of 16mm film, so we decided to be total nerds about it. We first shot the whole film digitally, edited it on set to see which frames we will be using in the film and two days after shooting it digitally, we started to shoot on film. This experience was invaluable because it was our first time shooting on film and we decided on the terms beforehand so we knew exactly which frames we needed (although a lot of them were edited out). The deciding factor on set was mutual trust because we could not see the exact frame we were filming or how sharp we wanted it to be, nor could we get a clear picture on the monitor. In any case, shooting on film turned out to be the right decision and the experience we got from it was priceless.

8. Are you working on any new projects?

I’m continuing with my Master’s Degree at the Academy of Dramatic Art and there I am currently working on my first exercise, which is adaptation. Since I am still studying, I would like to use it as an opportunity to research new possibilities and different ways of filming. This time, I will try and make a film that will be created out of bits of improvisation and that will, from the director’s point of view, be totally different from Forest. I am looking forward to the possibility of continuing to play and research and I will still be focused on working on projects with the whole crew.

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