Zagreb Dox is celebrating a round birthday!

From the project of a few passionate documentary enthusiasts to a key regional and global place of contemporary documentary

ZagrebDox opened its festival doors for the first time on February 21, 2005 with the film White Diamond by the great Werner Herzog. Great headlines will also mark the twentieth festival, which starts in less than a month.

20 years and 350 thousand visitors

More than 1,700 film submissions, of which as many as sixty are Croatian documentaries, form the basis from which the twentieth ZagrebDox was built. From a project started by a handful of passionate documentary enthusiasts under the leadership of Nenad Puhovski, this Zagreb festival has turned into a key regional and world venue for contemporary documentary over the course of two decades. It is a festival that is one of only forty worldwide whose films compete for the annual award of the European Film Academy in the documentary film category; it is a festival that has been visited by 350,000 visitors so far. Over 2,800 films were shown at almost 3,000 screenings, and more than 6,500 foreign and domestic guests arrived: filmmakers, professionals and journalists.

What films are expected this year

The twentieth edition of ZagrebDox will have the best recent titles and world, continental, regional and Croatian premieres almost in sequence. The film that will open the 20th ZagrebDox on April 14 in Kaptol Boutique Cinema cinemas has not yet been revealed, but it is already known that in Zagreb we will see the winners of the world's most important film festivals.

Cannes winner Four Daughters Kaouther Ben Hanija was among the nominated films for this year's Oscar.

Double winner of IDFA, the world's most important documentary festival, 1489 Shoghakat Vardanyane comes to Zagreb with a deeply intimate personal story.

From the recently concluded Berlinale comes the extremely interesting, controversial and two-award-winning No Other Land , which led to death threats to brave authors.

From the north of Europe comes the Norwegian A New Kind of Wilderness directed by Silja Evensmo Jacobsen, which charmed the jury at this year's Sundance.

Similarly, he made Nemanja Vojinović's film Bottlemen to the jury in Sarajevo, where he won the Srce last year.

After these attractive film crumbs that will lead to the celebratory cake of the 20th ZagrebDox, the preparation of a snack called ZagrebDox Pro, which revolves around documentary series, is in full swing. Authors from all over the world have applied for the development of their projects, and six of them will try to learn, find out and absorb as much knowledge as possible from relevant foreign and domestic authors and producers who know a lot about this type of production in five days. As so many times before: ZagrebDox is once again making pioneering strides in the documentary film festival world!