Best Croatian documentary movies

Handheld skate video meets hardcore social realism in a sensational film with the energy of a three-chord punk song and an unruly group of street kids in front of the camera, shot over 10 wild years of their young lives.

A documentary about the Celts, the fans of the Bilogorac football club from the Croatian village of Veliko Trojstvo. Interestingly, the members are not locals, but people from Bjelovar, a city 10 kilometers away that has a much better ranked football team. Dressed in green and white, the Celts spend every weekend escaping from provincial life to support the players.

Erna and Dževad are the owners of a pub in the vicinity of a steel mill, a complex that used to be one of the largest of its kind in Eastern Europe. Taking place one week before the pub’s official closedown, the film follows a series of conversations between visitors and frequent guests, who discuss the ways of reaching Germany – a new utopia of former socialist workers.

Immerse yourself in the true sense of the word into life, in true 3D. Water or abbreviated H2O, is actually a chemical compound of the elements oxygen and hydrogen. But this has really something! Water is in fact the most important element on our earth. Without water, the emergence of life on our planet would have been impossible. Sometime before several tens of millions of years it took the first great-fish out of the water to the land of the beginning he evolution. Just a few facts about the importance of this elixir of life: The element of water is in the mythologies and religions of most cultures of central importance and is considered the epitome of life.

With his film Generation '68, the author makes a homage to the generation with which he shares his youthful enthusiasm and the idea about a revolution that will change the world, while being "realistic and demanding the impossible". At the same time he questions the true impact of these changes on social and - probably more important - private level. Having ideas is easy; making them look credible to the generations that follow is somewhat more difficult. By rejecting the ideals of the 1968 as unworkable, the new generations are coming up with some of their own, maybe even more unrealistic ones...

Documentary series about native Croatian medieval kings, their kingdom and people who lived then. Story of rise of the kings, their peak and fall.

"The Message" is found footage video composed of speeches by the presidents of all 195 countries. Their messages become one global message. That message is vague, disturbing and does not guarantee a bright future.

Through dramatic reconstruction and documentary asides, the spirit of Italian poet, playwright, journalist, aristocrat and army officer Gabriele D’Annunzio is captured, presenting the nascent fascism in his attempts to forge a new state in the aftermath of the First World War.

Matchmaker Nediljko Babic, also known as "Gangster", helps a Bulgarian single mother find a new husband in Croatia. But a series of comically disastrous dates discloses the true nature of conservative Croatian men: they would rather die alone than marry a foreigner with a child.

From the moment we got engaged and set a wedding date, we began thinking about the reasons we chose one another. What was so special about this relationship that we decided to spend our lives together? Would our love be the same if we were born in another time or at another place? What is love exactly? Driven by those questions, we decided to embark on a one year journey around the world to research whether love, one of the highest values in our lives, is universal, or it is completely conditioned by the circumstances around us.

Planes, tanks, bombs, assault rifles, media and propaganda – they were all weapons used in the Homeland War. However, it was the songs that were were louder than everything else. Some used them to describe the nightmare around them, others manifested their political loyalty. The national television and radio considered songs an important means of political “struggle”, so they commissioned, financed, recorded and aired them intensively. Even some twenty years after these events, the wartime soundtrack still draws attention and triggers emotions.

Zeljko is the labour union leader at Gredelj Train Factory. His deputy, Mladen, has committed suicide after massive public protests and inter-union clashes. Zeljko is torn between the guilt he feels over Mladen’s death and workers’ expectations that he will lead a strike that should thwart a plan by the government, acting on the EU’s behest, to declare the factory bankrupt. WHAT’S TO BE DONE? is structured in three acts. The first act uses observational documentary footage; the second, footage filmed a decade later; while the third is fiction.

"The Boss Begins" is the second project from "The Boss" serial. It is a movie about transition, privatization and the people who worked diligently in the nineties to make sure they and we live in prosperity and happiness. It is the story of Agrokor before Agrokor.

Monuments are silent witnesses to the times when they were built and the people who built them. Through monuments one can trace the history of human kind. Monuments teach us about different customs, religions, cultures, economies, wars and social norms. Had their monuments not been preserved many peoples would have perished without a trace. Thousands of monuments were built throughout the former Yugoslavia in the 1945-1990 period to commemorate the sites where World War II battles had been fought. These monuments were once favorite destinations for school trips and political gatherings, as well as a necessary part of all family photos. At the present time, the monuments and their symbolism have been abandoned, neglected and destroyed. The main focus of this film is the destiny of these monuments as secondary raw materials.

In Croatia in 2005, a machine tools factory was occupied by its workers. Since then, they have operated collectively, becoming the only successful example of a worker occupation in post-socialist Europe. Today, as they seek a new model of collective ownership, the microcosmic world of the factory clashes with the forces of the globalized market economy, having an increasingly brutal impact on wages and the organization of the factory, causing rising disaffection among the workers. Filmmaker Srđan Kovačević returns regularly over a five year period to make a film that charts the evolution of this communal enterprise. Factory to the Workers tells the inside story of the workers who challenged the dominant economic narrative with their actions. After a decade, the same question remains: can a factory in the hands of workers survive at the periphery of capitalism, or do we need a bigger dream?

"To make the film Goddaddy was a great challenge, because it covers almost forty years of Milan Bandić's activity, a seemingly hyperactive and Trump-like character of the Croatian political scene. Bandić has been elected six times as the mayor of Zagreb, which is not only the capital city of all Croats, but also the capital city of all Croatian criminals. Three times Milan Bandić has rejected to give us an interview for the film, so we made an audition to find him a double." - Dario Juričan

A found footage visual journey through a poem by Anaissa Ali.

A feature documentary about one of the greatest sportsmen ever. Darko Kralj (the King) is the only sportsman in the history of sports who has beaten a world record in his category five times in a row at one world championship! A Croatian paralympic, seriously wounded in 1991 during the war in Croatia, Darko Kralj almost died. Doctors didn't expect him to survive. Today, he lives with a wife and three sons, the eldest one being the one Darko is the most attached to. A similar destiny brought them together; the kid has lost his biological father in the war. Tereza, his wife, has her own life story. Towards the end of this unusual life story, we shall get a clearer understanding of where Darko's strength and incredible love for life comes from...

Ljiljana is a young woman who drives a taxi in Zagreb, capital of Croatia. Apart from the initial surprise when they meet a female taxi driver, most passengers find her likable and they open up to her. Driving with Ljiljana through the city and listening to conversations she's having with a wide range of travelers, we discover the condition in which transition countries find themselves in when they're facing backsides of capitalism which leads to rising economic emigration but also her personal story that will make us ask ourselves where we are going.

One hundred years after the invention of film, Croatian film icon Mr. Fulir, who serves as the author’s alter-ego, comes up with the Faustian idea to bring back his youth. With a group of famous actors, he enthusiastically attempts to remake lost Croatian films from the silent era.

A documentary about rich history of rock scene in Rijeka, Croatia.

Istrian traditions, singing, culinary delights. All that in the time-honoured ritual of pig slaughter or prašćina. What is the importance of meat today and can we give up its utilitarian rudimentarity in the face of political, ecological, nutritionist, and other contemporary trends?

After finding out that doctors in Croatia cannot help their daughter who is suffering from terminal leukaemia, the parents of five-year-old Nora Šitum see their last hope in an experimental treatment in Philadelphia. They are given just seven days to pay for their daughter’s treatment – which will cost nearly one million dollars.

"The Boss" is a documentary about transition, privatization and corporations in Croatia, and touches upon the history of the largest Croatian corporation - Agrokor.

The Happy Child is a story of "New Wave" rock genre predominant in the ex-Yugoslavia during the socialist 70's and 80's.

A documentary essay about the relationships among Mediterranean men and their games. The film takes the form of a travelogue across Croatia, Italy, Slovenia and Turkey, and examines men, young and old, who come together like their ancestors did – to play games. During filming, however, the director suddenly faces a serious creative crisis and turns the camera on himself, turning the film into a playful homage to absurdity.

Some sixty years ago, a man went missing for four years. He returned back a changed man carrying along a painful secret. He later built his family’s life around this unspoken secret.

The Blockade is a unique view from within on the most massive, longest, and politically most significant student protest in the country, since 1971, that started in April of 2009 at the Faculty of humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb. The struggle against the commercialization of education and the blockade of teaching classes lasted for 34 days. The rebellion spread onto more than 20 faculties across the country and the students became an active and relevant political subject. The director followed everything: from the exhilarating preparation meetings and blocking of classes to the first signs of exhaustion, through personal situations and discussions late at night, from the initial support of most faculty members to the moment they turned their back to the movement and the attempt to reach the missing minister of education. This film shows that the blockade was not just physical and that it has a much broader meaning.

How do we speak about the horror with which we are faced but cannot come to terms with? The classmates have gathered for their fifteenth high-school reunion, reminiscing about their adolescent adventures. As the evening progresses, different dinner courses and drinks are brought out and the conversations become more open, yet there is one topic that everyone avoids, until alcohol encourages them to mention the shocking letter they have all received. The letter is a torturous confession from one of their former classmates, in which she reveals the brutal abuse she endured as a child and during high school.

Hills Village 21000 Split is a documentary which in a Fellini style represents the inhabitants of an unusual neighbourhood. We encounter a dentist and writer, a tired ex-boxer who had a carrier in Germany, a hardcore punk band Pas Maters, whose charismatic front man and lead singer mysteriously disappeared, an old soccer supporter with the last name Hajduk, an ex-hooligan diligently studying in a night school and many others. A complex portrait of an unusual Split neighbourhood and its even more unusual inhabitants with Hajduk as their religion.

Croatia’s achievement in coming 3rd at the 1998 World Cup in France was staggering. A nation barely established took on and beat the world’s powerhouse nations, coming within a whisker of lifting the trophy. But, this is much more than just a story about a talented football team, it is the tale of a nation emerging from the wreckage of the Balkan war and the disintegration of Yugoslavia to stand proudly as an independent country on football’s grandest stage.

An epic documentary of rise and fall of Ustasha regime in Croatia.

First breath is a decision. Each subsequent breath is a struggle for a goal still not in sight. A struggle for life. He is a former professional runner. A marathon runner. He reveals his suffering, pain and effort which are crucial elements of each and every race.

A biographic documentary about a punk-rock icon who surpassed the music and became a symbol of common sense and free thinking.

"Srbenka" is a film about peer violence toward children of different nationality in Croatia. It examines how the generation born after the war copes with the dark shadows of history.

The series will be discussed how the Yugoslav secret service methods mimicked the NKVD, about 2 million files, ie one agent to 10 people), torture, false testimony, show trials, executions without trial, secret places of burial, Titova obsession with the secret services, the structure of the secret service, the awards for the executioners, methods of recruiting staff, collateral victims, etc

Francesco resumes his world as if it were a sheet on which Hana can draw: a dialogue between friends in a movie game.

The city of Rijeka is the point of transition for groups of migrants fleeing to a new life. There they live at the train station until the next trip. That is where they all meet Tinka, a young woman who is fighting for better life conditions in their makeshift residence and their safe departure. Until she leaves Rijeka herself.

Croatian War of Independence narrated trough the experiences of the players of the National Soccer Team who won the third place during the 1998 FIFA World Cup, in France. Their victory delivered joy to a war­torn population and it is the highest achievement of a post­Yugoslavian nation in soccer competitions.

After Party is a documentary film that follows the last days in a love relationship of two men who decided to film their separation and work through issues left unresolved. The author and his boyfriend filmed their separation, using their emotions as fuel for the filming process. The goal was to document passion and eroticism of a love relationship in its final stage.

For us, a thought always presupposes a society, a culture and above all the consciousness of time. We are haunted by immortality, human notion par excellence. As if the world was here to fascinate us. And to disappoint us. The film travels around the bulb like the Earth around the Sun. Light makes the film visible. A fragile film, like our existence. In the orbit of the film tragedy and our reality, the image resists the cruelty of the experiment.

Have you ever wondered who are the people who appear as characters in Azra's songs? This documentary provides the answer to at least some of the questions.

On the Croatian island of Vis, a diverse group discusses their future, reflecting on the decline of storytelling and listening cultures. Fishermen, youth, intellectuals, and others, gather in cinematic dialogue, shaping the collective protagonist. Their debates on growth versus environmental protection connect past, present, and future, bridging local and global perspectives.

On the island where the filmmaker’s grandmother is buried, it is the tradition of women to choose the image that will represent them on their grave after they are gone. As director Sara Jurinčić and her mother travel to this island, we enter a world without men, where female ancestors take centre stage. This beautifully crafted film, both playful and serious, takes us on a cinematic odyssey to hear what the ancestors are whispering from their silent portraits.

One of the oldest footages of Zagreb, shows the local caffe "Corso".

We live with films every day, and it seems nothing easier than answering the question: what is a film? Obviously, a film is, first and foremost, a document, a testimony of the world that surrounds us. The rich expressional possibilities of film are based on the imperfection of the human eye, its sluggishness, so thanks to the stroboscopic effect we can animate a still image. Film is therefore a kinetic image, or a moving image. It can make the invisible visible, bring the distant closer, enlarge the small, speed up the slow, slow down the fast, and return the end to the beginning. The technological basis of film: light, film tape, camera, projector, film screen. Expressive possibilities of film: scientific, documentary, communicative, artistic. Basic film genres: differences among films.

A breathtaking quest for the dream the imposing city of Brasilia was based on, a marked contrast with the chaos of the adjacent construction workers' village. Everything about Brasilia was devised and designed, but not on the basis of some cold urban design concept: the plan proves to originate from 19th-century priest Don Bosco’s dream. The chaos and disorder of the adjacent construction workers' village Vila Amauri long stood in stark contrast to the grandeur and majestic regularity of Brasilia. Now the village has disappeared beneath the reservoir’s surface, the necessary order has been restored. All Still Orbit examines both these histories.

Film deals with the problematic of the water exploitation, contamination and manipulation. The documentary points to the realizations and discoveries that water memorizes and that it is conscious.

The birth date of film can be established: December 28, 1895. The place where it happened is also known: Paris, Boulevard des Capucines, Grand Caffe. It is also known who did it first: Louis Lumiere. However, the history of film starts in distant, almost unknown times: from drawings of cave people, through reliefs from Egyptian times, to the discovery of photography. Development of film technique: silent film, sound film, color film. Development of film expression: film as a recording of reality, film as an interpretation of reality, film as fiction or new reality. Development of film as an industry.

A documentary recording of the Šibenik port from 1904, by Frank S. Mottershaw. For a long time considered to be the oldest extant Croatian film and recording of Croatia, possibly even all Yugoslavian countries, dated to 1903 and ascribed to Stanisław Noworyta. In the meantime, these theories have been rejected, and this film is known to be a part of a larger film, "Krunisanje kralja Petra I Karađorđevića i putovanje kroz Srbiju, Novi Pazar, Crnu Goru i Dalmaciju" ("The coronation of king Peter I of Serbia and a ride trough Serbia, Novi-Bazar, Montenegro and Dalmatia"), by F.S. Mottershaw and Arnold Muir Willson.

A documentary recording the ceremony and procession in Split on St. Domnius’ Day, from 1911, made by an early pioneer of Croatian film, Josip Karaman.

In the 1950s, my grandmother's sister moved to Germany with her husband. The photographs she was sending documented their new life in the West.

A boy and girl wander alone through lush terrain looking for something. The moment they find a mysterious gate amid the dense shrubbery, they gain the ability to travel to both real and unearthly landscapes. More and more, a childlike imagination and the conflict between the profane and the sacred begin to permeate their behavior.

A monumental homage to Glenn Miller, a one shot film - Glenn Miller 2000. This 26- minute long piece, shot on a circular road in Novi Zagreb in many ways corresponded to the previously discussed attributes that linked Tom's homages and "uses" of Glenn Miller with Miller's music and personality.

It depicts the daily lives of people whose job is to chase away cormorants that eat fish from a fish farm near Donji Miholjac, Croatia. Cormorants are protected by law and their nesting grounds are located across the border, in Hungary, which gives the protagonists’ efforts a Sisyphean, absurd.

On a remote Adriatic island, goats have roamed freely for 40 years, following a failed farming project. Now deemed a problem, armed men arrive to restore "natural balance" through a chilling cull – revealing how easily violence can be justified as the only solution.

Film is about one of all time best basketball player from Europe - Drazen Petrovic, who after successful career in European league played in the NBA. He died in 1993 in a car accident in Germany.

Milan and Silvana live in Medulin, a small coastal town in Croatia. Milan rears cows on the nearby island of Finera, tending them daily, as many did before him. But Silvana wants much more and keeps complaining that Milan should pay more attention to their house and possibly rent it to tourists. However, a dramatic event in Milan's life will clearly show that the times have changed and they are not getting any younger.

A five-year-old boy is completely uninterested in food, which results in conflicts with his mother. The effort she invests in feeding him is equal to the boy’s effort not to eat the offered food. The longer the lunch, the clumsier is their balance on the verge of fight. The duel between the boy’s resourcefulness and the spoon, the tears and mother’s love, ends with the victory of the more persistent. The last bites are either left on the plate, or leave with the boy to bed in his mouth.

The film Drinking Water and Freedom was made in 1973. It was only one minute long. The review commission for films from Socialist Republic of Croatia prohibited it from public screening. Its sequel, Drinking Water and Freedom II, was made in 1986. It tells the story of the fate of its predecessor and at the same time details what happened with a well and a stone plaque, the objects that had caused its ban. In 1998, Drinking Water and Freedom III was made, a third instalment and a continuation of the story about water, freedom and the well.

The film analyses all the things imposed on women by the media. It presents the framework within which women are supposed to act and accept it as their own – the stereotypes imposed via women's magazines and, primarily, through fashion and advertising industries. It deals with illusions presented to us by media as reality and it peeps behind the scenes. It is a film about women as shown and presented by the media. It was created in cooperation with the women's association B.a.B.e.

In a documentary manner, "Amen" addresses the issues of violence and other moral principles of contemporary society in all of its layers.

The production of cultural meaning, and of value, takes on a number of associations in "Krumpira Krumpira" ("Potatoes, Potatoes"), from 2001. The film pictures the artist selling cakes - a substitute for the standard plebeian foodstuff, bread - in the middle of a deserted, snowy forest landscape.

A video that uses Finnegans Wake as a structuring device to create a portrait of the farm Galeta retreated to in his final decade, where he focused on making the study of permaculture his ultimate 'artistic landscape'.

This poetic documentary film presents the one day events in the Zadar County. It starts late at night, during sleep. The sounds describe the nocturnal images - agitated animal-like bodies, empty streets and the allegorical scenes of a concealed reality. The film leads into the universal presence of nature and the human sphere of the senses. The film's rhythm changes in time and shows the transition from night to late afternoon in a Mediterranean ambiance. Playing with sudden fades from night to dawn, from tension to the carefree game of a spider, to flowers, bees and sheep in the rocky ground of the Island of Pag, and respecting silence as the natural flow of the events, this film makes one aware of the richness of change in the sublime ordinariness of a single day.

An intimate story about the author's search for her brother who went missing in action during war in Croatia in 1991. In a way, the film is a follow-up of the author's grandmother whose husband was killed in World War II. For the rest of her life the grandmother was awaiting his return. The Boy Who Rushed won numerous national and international awards, including the annual Vladimir Nazor Award for Film. It was shown at more than twenty international festivals. In 2001, it was Croatian candidate for Oscar for Best Documentary Film. The Boy Who Rushed is one of the best and most awarded Croatian documentaries in the past two decades.