President Milanović at the Premiere of the Film “Beautiful Evening, Beautiful Day”
The President of the Republic Zoran Milanović attended the official premiere of the film “Beautiful Evening, Beautiful Day” directed by Ivona Juka at the Cinestar Kaptol Centre. The film was Croatia’s candidate for Oscar, screened at almost 50 international film festivals around the world, and was awarded 19 international awards.
The film is set in the 1950s, and follows four friends, partisans and artists, who become targets of a repressive system due to their sexual orientation. A party official is ‘assigned’ to expose and destroy them, but after a while he begins to question his own boundaries of loyalty, identity and personal conscience.
The world premiere of the film took place at the Frameline Film Festival in San Francisco, where it won the Audience Award, while the film’s European premiere was at the Warsaw Film Festival. It was also Croatia’s official Oscar submission for Best International Feature Film. Director Ivona Juka previously achieved a notable international success with the film “You Carry Me”.
The film features prominent regional actors, such as Emir Hadžihafizbegović, Anja Šovagović Despot, Vojislav Brajović, Svetozar Cvetković, Ivana Boban and others. Dragan Ruljančić is the film’s cinematographer, Nenad Pirnat the editor, Zvonko Šarić the art director, Ana Bulajić Črček the make-up designer, while Goranka Krpan is the film’s costume designer. The music was written by Michael Brook, composer and Golden Globe nominee who had previously composed music for the films “Into the Wild”, “The Fighter”, and “Brooklyn”. The production was done by 4film, whose films have so far been screened at more than 40 international festivals where they won 19 awards, seven of which were audience awards.
The film is a co-production of Croatia, Canada, Poland, Cyprus and Bosnia and Herzegovina. It will first be shown in CineStar cinemas in Zagreb, Osijek, Rijeka and Split. The film’s release coincides with the International Day Against Homophobia.
PHOTO: Office of the President of the Republic of Croatia / Ana Marija Katić