19th Mediterranean Film Festival Program Presented

ŠIROKI BRIJEG, (Patria) - From August 22 to 25, the 19th Mediterranean Film Festival will be held in Široki Brijeg – one of the most significant film events in BiH and the region.

The competition program features 20 documentary films. Festival selector Zdravko Mustać has chosen ten films in the short film category – up to 30 minutes, and ten films in the feature film category – over 30 minutes.

The festival will open on Wednesday, August 22, at 9 PM with the documentary film "Sisters" by director Zdenko Jurilj, which will be screened in the "Local Authors" program. In addition to this, in the off-program of local authors, on August 24, the film "Paths of Tobacco" by director Mirko Pivčević will also be screened.

At the opening ceremony, a film from the MFF workshop, which high school students, participants of these workshops, have been filming in Široki Brijeg in recent weeks under the guidance of Lucy Eagleson, along with their colleagues, young filmmakers from America, will also be shown.

In cooperation with the Sarajevo Film Center, the legal successor of the archive of Bosnian-Herzegovinian cinematography, eight films will be screened on the first day of the festival as part of the campaign "Save the Film Treasures of BiH". These are masterpieces of BiH cinematography that were favorites of both audiences and juries at festivals around the world during the time they were made.

The cooperation with the most significant world film network HBO continues, where the documentary "In Case of War" will be screened in the Adria program. MFF Fora, the youngest program of the Mediterranean Film Festival, offers screenings of the films "Coco and the Great Secret" and "Leo da Vinci: Mission Mona Lisa" to the youngest this year.

In addition to a strong documentary competition program, a novelty of this year's festival is the "In Focus" program, which will showcase the best achievements of Mediterranean cinematography from the past year. "In Focus" is a dynamic and diverse selection of seven films that, according to festival selector Zdravko Mustać, have already marked the film year or whose time is yet to come.

On Friday, August 24, the feature film "Comic Sans" by Croatian director Nevio Marasović, starring Janko Popović Volarić and Zlatko Burić, will be screened at the open-air cinema. It brings a film story full of emotions and funny life situations to the big screen.

The best films at MFF will be decided by an international jury in two categories – for the selection of the best feature film and the best short film. In addition to the six-member jury, which will select the winners of the 19th Mediterranean Film Festival on August 25 and award the Grand Prix MFF projector and the second prize MFF projector, the audience traditionally awards the third prize by voting.

This year's Mediterranean Film Festival will close with the feature film "The Eighth Commissioner" by Croatian director Ivan Salaj, after the awards ceremony. It is a comedy based on the literary hit of the same name by Renato Baretić, about a compromised politician Siniša Mesnjak and his attempts to organize elections and establish authority on the most remote Adriatic island of Trećići.

In addition to a large number of films, an indispensable part of the Mediterranean Festival is the relaxed atmosphere and good fun, film quizzes, workshops, rich prizes, and parties at the festival square in the center of Široki Brijeg.