About festival

Motovun Film Festival is entirely dedicated to films made in small cinematographies and independent productions, films that broke out through their innovation, ideas, and the power of their stories. In everything, except for the ambition and the quality, Motovun wants to be a small festival showing small films, small in the warmest sense od the word.

Motovun Film Festival is a five-day film marathon in which film screenings alternate from 10 a.m. until 4 a.m., with evening outdoor screenings and daily screenings in theatres. Festival program consists of around 70 titles from all over the world, from documentaries to feature films, from shorts to long forms, from guerilla made films to co productions. The only criteria in their selection is that they fit in the open-minded atmosphere of the festival with their innovations. This year the festival is being held for the twelwth time.

Why the festival?

In the year of the first MFF in cities across Croatia cinema theatres were being closed down. That's why we renovated an old, long-closed theatre in a small medieval town of Motovun and we made the main square into an outdoor film venue.

On the very day of the opening of the first MFF, on August 10, 1999, there was not even one non-Hollywood film being shown in Croatian cinemas. Not even one out of around 3000 titles that are produced outside of big studios every year. That's why we chose films that were made all over the world.

In a country in which MFF was launched there was not even one international feature film event. That is why we launched the festival.