The Smartest Neighborhood in the Country

Ivan Ramljak was born in 1974 in Zagreb. In the nineties, he studied at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing at the University of Zagreb. In the second half of the 90s, he started working as a journalist and editor in written and electronic media (Heroina Nova, Puls, Studentski list, Revolt, Godine, Vijenac, Večernji list, Radio 101, Radio 1…), oriented towards film and musical art. At the end of the 90s, he was one of the initiators and editors of the cult pop magazine Nomad, as well as Radio Student, the first student radio station in Croatia, where he worked as an editor from 1997 to 2001. In the spring of 1999, together with a group of enthusiasts from the Udruženje za razvoj kulture (URK), he started the Močvara club in Zagreb, where he worked until 2004 as one of the club’s managers, a concert organizer and DJ, and the author of the program ‘Filmske večeri u Močvari’. In the winter of 2002, within the framework of URK, he started the Human Rights Film Festival Zagreb. From 2002 to 2011, he was employed as a music, film and TV editor in Klik magazine, and from 2011 to 2017, he published film reviews and articles about film in Forum, 21. stoljeće, Filmonaut, as well as on the portal www.nemilosrdnigadovi.com.

In the last ten years, he has mostly been involved in film directing and selection for film festivals and programs. After a series of short films – three feature films and one experimental film – which he co-directed with Marko Škobalj, in 2016 he became independent and focused exclusively on documentary films. Since then, he has directed five documentaries that have experienced great domestic and regional success, and have been shown at more than 80 festivals around the world (Cinéma du réel, DOK Leipzig, Open City Documentary Festival, Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival…). Among the awards, two HDFK’s Octavians for the best domestic documentary film (‘Once Upon a Youth’ and ‘El Shatt – A Blueprint for Utopia’) stand out, victories at the most important regional documentary film festivals Dokufest (‘Once Upon a Youth) and Slobodna zona (‘Islands of Forgotten Cinemas’), as well as world and international premieres at important European documentary film festivals Cinéma du réel (‘Home of the Resistance’) and DOK Leipzig (‘El Shatt – A Blueprint for Utopia’). In addition, ‘El Shatt…’ was the most watched documentary film in cinemas in 2023.

In addition to directing films, from 2013 to 2022 he worked as the editor of the Kratki utorak program at the Tuškanac cinema for the Croatian Film Association, and from 2016 to 2023 as the artistic director and selector of the Tabor Film Festival. From the spring of 2022, he works as one of the short film selectors, as well as a scout for feature films from the former Yugoslavia, at the prestigious International Film Festival Rotterdam. In the meantime, he completed his BA studies in cultural management at the Baltazar Polytechnic in Zaprešić, as well as his MA in documentary directing at the ADU in Zagreb.

Marko Škobalj was born in Zagreb in 1974. He is a writer of original strip scenarios, poetry, short stories and critique, and translator of technical texts, comics and books. Freelance copywriter, author of eight film scripts and director of two short films. In 2009, together with Ivan Ramljak, he directed the Liberation in 26 Pictures that won the Atlantic Group award for best short film at the Sarajevo Film Festival in 2009, and subsequently appeared at Rotterdam Film Festival and a dozen other international festivals.