Motovun Film Festival

The Motovun Film Festival is an annual film festival established in 1999 and held in the small town of Motovun. It usually takes place over five or six days in late July or early August.

Motovun Film Festival is entirely dedicated to films made in small studios and independent film productions. Founded by film director Rajko Grlić and producer Boris T. Matić, it was first organized in the late 1990s to fill the gap in cinema repertoire as there were almost none non-Hollywood films in wide distribution in Croatia at the time. The festival program every year consists of around 70 titles from all over the world, from documentaries to feature films, short and feature-length films, from guerrilla-made films to co-productions.

Over time the festival become widely popular among Croatian youths, as well as foreign backpackers. Every year during the festival, a camp for visitors is organized on the foothills of Motovun, where anybody can put up a tent. The festivalgoers’ camp has become one of the hallmarks of the festival. In January 2007 British newspaper The Guardian described the festival as “a cross between Glastonbury and Sundance.”[1] It is often referred to as “a Woodstock of film festivals”.

The festival also grew in status on the festival circuit. From an event that was once considered a “backpacker’s film festival,” by 2007 it was recognized as one of the two most important film festivals held on the territory of the former Yugoslavia, along with the Sarajevo Film Festival.

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