Saturday on Zagreb Film Festival starts with the final film of the Bib for Kids program – as a treat for kids, free screening of Dutch film Taking Chances will take place at 11a.m. This family film by Nicola van Kilsdonk focuses on the nine-year-old girl Kiek. Although their country has not experienced war for a long time, Kiek's family is nevertheless affected by wars: Kiek's father is in Afghanistan, working as a physician. Concerned about him, she decides to take matters in her own hands. This interesting film that deals with important issues in life won Cinekid Award for Best Film in 2011. It is intended for the kids from the first to fourth grades of elementary school.
The end of the festival week also brings along reruns of the films from the main program and one Zagreb premiere. In Cinema Europa at 3p.m., we will once again have a chance to see Volcano, the Rúnar Rúnarsson's drama about the last chapter of the love story of an elderly couple from a picturesque Reykjavik suburb.
The program continues at 5p.m. with the debutant feature-length film Children of Kinshasa, by Belgian debutant Marc-Henri Wajnberg. "Child witches are the root of all Kinshasa’s problems," one woman shouts as she chases a child out of her home. In this sprawling city there are 30,000 kids who have been accused of witchcraft and cast out of their homes. As a way of passing the time in the most dangerous streets in the world, they form a musical outfit. Jamming together on whatever instruments they can find, or composing music with a series of broken electronic toys, the kids make the most of the circumstances they live in. This combination of documentarism and fiction has been inspired with the incredible story from Kinshasa. The film focuses on a group of children, outcasts from society, who deal with their fate by forming a rap band.
The official closing and award-presentation ceremony of the 10th Zagreb Film Festival starts at 8p.m. The ceremony will be followed by the screening of the omnibus film Zagreb Stories Vol. 2, consisting of six new interesting stories about love and family in present-day Zagreb. The authors of the stories are Hana Veèek, Aldo Tardozzi, Sara Hribar, Ivan Sikavica, Josip Viskoviæ and Radislav Jovanov Gonzo.
Three reruns from the My Third Film program will be shown in Cinema Tuškanac on Saturday afternoon and night. At 5p.m. you can see The Fairy, the third film by French-Belgian directing trio Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon and Bruno Romy, who already won ZFF's Golden Prams for their earlier films, The Iceberg and Rumba. The Fairy is a story about an unusual relationship of Fiona the Fairy and night clerk Dom, followed by a series of slapstick set pieces which hark back to the work of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Jacques Tati.
At 7p.m. we screen the new film of Andrei Zvyagintsev, who won Golden Prams for both of his first films, The Return and The Banishment. Elena is a psychological drama about a modest wife who, driven by despair and motherly concern for her son, kills her rich husband. The program in Cinema Tuškanac ends with the screening of Laurence Anyways, a film of the productive young Canadian author Xavier Dolan. The film is an epic story of a relationship that faces insurmountable problems when one of the partners decides to change his sex.
Dokukino KIC offers two documentaries today – Life in Stills and Èedo. Israeli director Tamara Tal's film Life in Stills tells the story about Miriam Weissenstein, who never imagined that she would be facing a new chapter in her life at age of 96. But when The Photo House – her late husband Rudi’s life’s work – was destined for demolition, even this opinionated and uncompromising woman knew she needed help. Under the cloud of a family tragedy, a special relationship is forged between Miriam and her grandson, Ben, as they embark on a heart-wrenching journey, comprising many humorous and touching moments – a journey that requires a lot of love, courage, and compassion.
The latter film, Èedo, by Croatian author Nikola Strašek, already had its premiere on Thursday. It is a documentary about a homeless person whose life is marked not only with alcoholism and drug addiction, but also with the fact that he is a child from a mixed marriage.
As regards entertainment, two confusion DJs will take care of it on this festival Saturday: DJ Phillipe in Cinema Europa and Funk Guru in Cinema Griè.