This is a question we often hear from festival guests, audiences and collaborators, so we decided to tell you – as far as it is possible. Why wouldn’t it be possible, you may ask? Well, because it is not really an exact science. Rather, it’s a combination of defining the festival’s theme, prominence of the kinds of films we want to screen, their availability and visibility, our perception of Croatian and European festival scenes, and obviously, taking into account what we have learned our audience likes and considering what it is that we might want to introduce them to, challenge them, and above all, create an emotion. So on top of this all comes instinct and experience, and let’s not forget the budget: besides the obvious costs of putting up a festival, screening a film comes with a substantial price too.

When my friend Robert Zuber invited me to curate Rab Film Festival, my first question was: „What kind of a festival?“ Croatia has many film festivals that cover a multitude of genres, forms, styles and topics, so how can we stand out? Since we are both in essence journalists, and everything that came after in our careers built upon that angle, we decided on investigative cinema. But what is investigative cinema? It may seem easy to define it in terms of documentary films which often aim to uncover and examine certain topics, but even this is not so clear cut, let alone how this term would be positioned within fiction cinema. So we realised that we will, together with the audience and our colleagues at home and around the world, learn as we go. We decided to investigate what investigative cinema is, so the programme and side activities that you have the chance to experience every August in Rab is the result of this process.

We are a small, or „boutique“ festival, meaning that we show only about 25 films, and out of these, only 12 constitute the main competition programme. This means we have to pick carefully and meticulously with many criteria in mind, and since we don’t accept applications, this is a fully curated event. We follow big and small festivals in Europe, North America and Asia, we follow what is happening in Croatia and the region, and we watch many documentary and fiction films in order to make a programme that is engaging, relevant, audience-oriented but also challenging. Our main goal is to build an audience that will, as years go by, know what kind of films to expect at Rab Film Festival, but also to surprise them and inspire them to look for some different kinds of art than what they’re used to. We take into account all the different ages and walks of life that our audience comes from and try to strike a balance between entertainment, education and art.

But we do not exist in a vacuum. Other festivals in Croatia and the region will want to screen the same films as us, and we collaborate with some of them. National or regional premieres are a matter of prestige among festivals, but our aim is not to build this kind of reputation: we simply show films that fit our topic and which we believe would be interesting for audiences in Rab. Still, other festivals who want premieres sometimes prevent us from showing some films that we want, and this is another reason we position the festival at the end of August, after the biggest world festivals like IDFA, Sundance, Berlinale, Cannes, CPH:DOX, and regional ones, such as Motovun, Pula and Sarajevo. This gives us a good overview and a certain freedom in picking films, as well as feedback from audiences and critics at those festivals.

Since we don’t have a strictly established system or pattern of selection, except the widest idea of the fiction and documentary split, every edition of Rab Film Festival is an experiment that builds on previous years. This makes our work challenging but also exciting, and most importantly, it is an organic process that eventually culminates in six days of films that live and breathe today with the present audiences, but also reflect the past and inform the future. And, we believe, entertains, educates, uplifts and inspires people in Rab and visitors from outside. 

Vladan Petkovic

Press release from the festival:

RAFF Generation once again brings a series of lectures, workshops, talks and case studies aimed at young people who want to gain a better understanding of film, journalism and the media – as well as anyone who wants to learn from professionals with extensive experience.

How do we watch films, and how much do we really understand what we are watching? Film critic Vladan Petković, in his workshop How to Watch and Discuss a Film, as a Filmmaker or as a Viewer, will explore critical approaches to watching films and the different ways filmmakers and audiences engage with them.

Prof. Tomislav Levak will address the challenges facing the journalism profession in Motivation in Journalism at a Time of Major Changes in the Media Market, while Nova TV journalist Barbara Štrbac will share her experience in the lecture Breaking News in Small Newsrooms.

What does a young filmmaker’s first serious encounter with investigative documentary filmmaking look like? Vida Žagar will share her experience through a case study of the documentary “The World’s Best Film Professor”, focusing on a young filmmaker working on their debut investigative documentary.

And in an age of almost limitless content, how do we decide what is actually worth watching? Đelo Hadžiselimović will address the topic How to Choose Films in the Age of Streaming Platforms Without an Editor Choosing for You?

On the other side of the camera, director Igor Jelinović, author of the film “Koke”, will talk about the experience of making his first feature film through a very practical question: How to Survive Your Debut Film?

What does it take for a film idea to actually become a finished film? Filip Grujić and Aleksa Borković will present their experience of working on a project through the topic “Yugo Goes to America – How Did We Manage to Shoot It?”

But once a film has been shot, its journey to the audience is only beginning. Belgian producer and distributor Thierry Detaille will introduce participants to this often less visible side of the film industry through the topic Production, Distribution, Sales – What Are They?

And after all the questions about how we watch, choose, create, produce and bring films to audiences, perhaps the simplest and most important question remains: why do we love film in the first place? Danish film critic Tue Steen Müller will offer his own perspective in the lecture Why Do I Love Film?

This year’s RAFF Generation concludes with a conversation between festival programmer Vladan Petković and RAFF director Robert Tomić Zuber about the participants’ impressions of the programme.

The RAFF Generation programme is supported by the Croatian Audiovisual Centre (HAVC).

I saw the film but understood that I did not get it all. Especially who was who in this three generation family drama, that takes place in Uzice in Serbia. I went back to the MacBook this morning and watched it again and understood everything, including how great a film it is. I am sure it will be loved by the audience at Sarajevo Film Festival. It is entertaining AND touching with an absolute star as protagonist, the aunt Gordana, around whom all the other characters circle, first of all her grown-up children Mladen and Marija, but also the sisters of Gordana, Biljana and Mira, and their mother… and many others, also grandchildren.

In one of the key scenes where Gordana is confronted by her daughter, Marija, her little son sitting in the middle of the sofa says to Bojana, the director behind the camera – save your batteries, stop filming, it’s gonna be an ugly film… From a child’s perspective he is right, there are so many hideous stories from the past of Gordana and, in this case, her daughter, that comes to the surface. Abuse.

Bojana comes back to Serbia from Hollywood, she is an actress, she wants to stay with her aunt, with whom she spent very little time when a child, before she and her parents went to Australia, where she grew up. As a child she was not allowed to see Gordana, who was an alcoholic and lived a life full of parties, having relationships to many men, leaving her two children alone – just like she she, Gordana, was pretty much alone as a child.

There are photos from their respective childhoods but the brave and wise solution by Bojana is to reenact scenes from the past. She does so inspired by Gordana´s obsession with tv soaps. The editing functions perfectly, and it is fun to watch. There is for instance a scene, where Gordana – being the third child – sits with her two sisters and does not eat… her father has told her that she should sit and “inhale” the smells from their food, that would make her full!

It is the face and presence of Gordana and her – being sober now – extraordinary helpfulness to older people around her, AND her story as a successful hairdresser with her own salon that took my attention. She won a competition and was invited to become a superb hairdresser. She said no. “Do you know what it means to be damaged”, she says in one of the many fine intimate conversations she has with Bojana. It turns out that Bojana also has had a problem with drinking; at a point she says – or is it Gordana – that she does not want to be like her aunt.

Who openly says that she destroyed the life of her children. For two years, they say, they were alone, I did not have a mother, says Mladen. But she is now, the film shows, a caring grandmother – and what was Gordana’s salon is now a salon of Marija!

A soap opera as the poster says, yes, with the word documentary in focus, hybrid, does not matter. A complex structure unfolded to become a Great film!

❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️

Serbia, Australia, 85 mins.

“Artist Dragana Jurišić travels to the town of Bijeljina, Bosnia and Herzegovina, to stage a short film in the style of a mythical cult Western director Hari Džekson (Harry Jackson). In an attempt to uncover the story of Hari’s life and legacy, Dragana embarks on making a Western with the local community. She meets his former collaborators, family members, and local residents, piecing together memories of Hari’s town before the war and getting to know its inhabitants today. The resulting documentary film becomes an exploration of the impact of war on Hari, herself and the town. It also asks the question if the spirit of Hari Dzekson still exists today.”

This is what the film is about. It is entertaining to watch, especially her Western auditions with kids and grown-ups, many knew Hari, described him as a nice guy, “he was always chasing justice”, worked with him on his westerns, knew how to hold a gun and how to operate it. So it is a looking-back film with Dragana Jurišić, who lives in Ireland, contemplating on nationalism, “the ideology of idiots” as one says. There is an interview with the journalist Yusuf, who was captured and tortured by the warlord Arkan and his group – “noone has until today been held accountable for what Arkan did when he was in Bijeljina”. And the shocking photos of Ron Haviv are shown. You can go to the internet to take a look, I can’t afford to show them here.

I prefer to stay with the director and skilled photographer Dragana, who finds a location in the countryside, where Darko lives, a bachelor, who invites the film crew to come and shoot the western in memory of Harry Jackson at his place.

Hari stayed in Bijeljina but sent his family – wife and kids – abroad.

Nationalism… there is a short clip from Dublin, from a demonstration against foreigners coming to Ireland, “send them back”. Alas, could have been Copenhagen…

❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️

Ireland, Croatia, 2026, 93 mins.

There is a bitterness in the face of the charismatic elderly Roko Markovina. “There is no justice in the world, nothing is fair”. He lives on an island and goes with a stick. He is doing gardening. Let me quote from the always competent publicist Dimitra Kouzi’s synopsis:

“Roko Markovina was a socialist member of the Parliament of Bosnia and Herzegovina during the Bosnian War. A respected and widely loved public figure, he believed that, when war
came, it was his moral duty to lead by example and remain in Mostar with his family, even as the city was torn apart by ethnic conflict. They were soon driven out by nationalists from their own ethnic community, who branded Roko a traitor and seized their home. Although the family eventually recovered the house, they never returned.”

Why not, says one of his children, Dragan, “I lost my hometown” – the other son Damir is the one, who made the film – they are both in the film’s central scene that takes place at the dinner table and present is also the wife and mother of the two, Zinaida. I don´t want to live in a divided city, father Roko says, Mostar is full of hate. You exiled us, say mother and sons, and yet says the wife, whenever you have been there to visit, you come home telling that you met so many old friends, says Zinaida… and enemies, says Roko.

Excellent archive material shows Roko Markovina speaking in the BiH parliament, powerful he is and strong in his argumentation for a non-nationalistic country. He was appointed Head of Civil Defense in Mostar during the war, “I buried 386 people”, he says.

The 13th of October 1993 the family left their apartment in Mostar, actually they were thrown out by the winning Croat nationalistic party.

The film’s director, Damir, states in an interview with publicist Kouzi that “Reflecting on how best to portray the war we lived through in Bosnia and Herzegovina, I realised that my family is by no means alone in a struggle to accept the new post-war society and its rules. After nearly fifty years of living together, many families in BiH found themselves excluded by the new nationalist divides and factions.” He does not take a stand against his father, although he and the brother Dragan indeed reproach him for being so untouchably stubborn – your position had consequences for your family.

There is a lot of images from the childhood of Damir and Dragan, home video clips that are inserted into footage of today and archive from Sarajevo during the war is strongly there, so the place for the premiere is of course obvious.

There are not many smiles from Roko Markovina, and yet, watch the film and enjoy the ending scene with him and the director…

Croatia, 2026, 75 mins.

❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️

“The idea of making a film first came to me after the death of my close friend and brother-in-arms, 20-year-old Artem. I really wanted him to be remembered. My brothers-in-arms, who had by then become like family, accepted the idea. But during that period there was almost no time for “just filming” — in war there is constant work and no days off. I did not film secret operations. I did not take the camera to combat positions. I filmed only when it was possible and when it did not interfere with service…” A quote from an interview with Helena Maksyom from the website of Ukrainian festival DocuDays, where the film had its premiere and won two awards, for Best Film and for the editing. Artem is on the photo taken from the interview, “provided by the director”.

Helena is at the funeral of Artem filming – cleverly thought – flowers being brought to the grave and from a distance – respect! – the sorrow of his family. The emotional response from Helena comes after, a cut to her with a rifle firing several shots, I see it as getting the aggression out.

The film, as a whole, is far from aggression. With Helena in picture talking to the camera giving comments to the situation and/or talking to her frail mother, who in the beginning of the film says to Helena “take your passport and get out of the country” – Helena answers why she wants to stay in her country, we spectators do not doubt her attachment to her country.

The film has a non-sensationalistic tone, where we spectators are with Helena and her family, as she called it in the interview, when they are in places waiting for the next call for battle, when they are evacuating a family (I will never forget the wee boy with big curious eyes turning around for the camera, when he and his family goes for the car for evacuation), when she has conversations with the young soldiers, when we see soldiers being treated for wounds in the field hospital etc.

The approach is respectful and for me beautiful, the film is likewise a personal documentation of high quality.

Ukraine, Romania, Germany, The Netherlands 2026, 104 min.