
Lordan Zafranović
Directing
Biography
Lordan Zafranović is a Czech-Croatian film writer and director.
Known For

Documentary TV series 'Tito – the Last Witnesses of the Testament' of film director Lordan Zafranović is an intimate story about the last witnesses Tito's testament and their lives and Tito's life in 13 episodes each of 56 minutes duration.
Tito – The Last Witnesses of the Testament

Set in Dubrovnik, this drama chronicles a friendship between three men, that began just before World War II. One of the men is of Italian origin, another is the wealthy heir of a shipping fortune, and the third is the son of a Jewish antique-store owner. Before the war, they are fast friends, enjoying one another's company at carnivals and at a private fencing club. However, when the war comes, the Italians and Germans move in to create the Independent State of Croatia. The Italian friend becomes a fascist and courts and marries the sister of his rich friend. Soon enough, atrocities are being committed, and anyone suspected of Jewish or Serbian parentage or anti-fascist leanings, is killed.
Occupation in 26 Pictures

A celebrated theatre director’s perfect life unravels when his wife’s secret lover exposes the hollowness beneath his success, leading to a calm divorce and his isolation in a luxurious but empty villa with his nearly grown daughter. His attempts to fill the void through a high-end escort only delay the real crisis, when he cannot accept his daughter’s first great love.
Vengeance Is Mine

Based on the novel of Arsen Diklić which describes the horror’s of concentration camp Jasenovac.
The Children of Kozara
An epic documentary of rise and fall of Ustasha regime in Croatia.
The Decline of the Century: Testament L.Z.

This film tells the story about the concentration camp run by Ustashas and was made on the 40th anniversary of the inmates' escape from the camp.
Jasenovac: The Cruelest Death Camp of All Times

Trials and tribulations of a Croatian communist intellectual in the turbulent years before, during and after the Second World War.
Evening Bells
On a hot summer afternoon in a city courtyard, a young man amuses himself by aiming air guns at random targets. The film examines the roots and manifestations of Evil, which will become the director’s permanent concern.
Afternoon (The Gun)

A lighthouse keeper lives on an isolated island together with his wife, ailing father and retarded sister. News of a serial killer stalking the isolated lighthouses makes him leave in order to hunt him down. In the meantime, the wife meets a mysterious and seductive stranger.
Angel's Bite

A married couple from Germany, middle-aged Manfred and his much younger wife Meyra, who are originally from Zagreb, spend their vacation on the island Hvar. They are staying at Ms. Marija's house. Ms. Marija's son and Meyra feel an erotic attraction to each other. After some time, a tension develops between the young man, Meyra and Manfred. Nobody knows Meyra's secret, or her true reason for coming to Hvar.
Haloa - The Feast of the Whores
Unreleased film based on the book Ostrvo Balkan by Vidosav Stevanovic about the Bosnian War and the ethnic nationalism which led to it.
Balkan Island: The Last Story of the Century

The setting is the islands off the Dalmatian coast of Yugoslavia, during WW II. The islands are controlled by occupying Italian forces, and a resistence movement of Communists is dedicated to sabotaging and ending the occupation. When a wealthy young man joins the resistence, he falls in love with a woman who turns out to be a spy for the Italians. As a result of his liaison and her activity, they are both executed by a Communist comrade - a previous friend. The comrade is dedicated to the hard-line policies of the resistence, until he himself falls in love with the daughter of a bourgeois landowner on the island - a landowner who has collaborated with the Italians. Neither the Italian occupying army (one officer is shown in an attempted rape scene) nor the resistence fighters are stereotyped forces for good or evil, but all are equally subject to the dehumanizing effects of war.
The Fall of Italy

Split shipyard worker's Mate, lives with his elderly mother and wife Mara, and trying to prove himself as a boxer. At the same time, his younger brother Luka drunk sex and fantasize about trip in Germany, embarks on a passionate love relationship with a young girl Orom, which was a bit sexually satisfied only him, his step father who thought he was father. The tense atmosphere seasoned with sea waves,can only bring tragedy.
Passion According to Matthew
A group of young men rampage all day through the streets of an Adriatic port make love, wrangle over lunch, drink, finally steal a bus and is a burst of destructiveness drive it over the cliffs into the sea from which in surrealist fashion they are resurrected.
Sunday
A comedy mocking the self-management system - the workers become owners of a luxury hotel on the Adriatic coast.
Guests and Workers

Predrag Popovic, Goran Markovic, Srdjan Karanovic, Rajko Grlic and Lordan Zafranovic talk about the Russian intervention in Czechoslovakia in 1968.
Winter of One Spring

Students from the Prague Academy of Film (FAMU) talk about their life in Prague. Filmed in Prague in 1968, a few months before the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia.
Us from Prague

We encounter the controversial Croatian film director Lordan Zafranovic in voluntary exile in Prague. The film follows his rise from a talented outsider to the celebrated Yugoslav director of the acclaimed war film, 'An Occupation in 26 Pictures'. His life story is an unconventional depiction of a rise and fall that reveals compromises made in order to survive artistically during communism, as well as the missed opportunities and miscalculations that led to his inability to adapt in later years. Is the charismatic Zafranovic a national traitor or a victim of historical circumstances in which the only thing he wanted to do, in his own words, was to be himself and make films?
Occupation, the 27th Picture

The Focus is the film about easy death on the Mediterranean sun.
The Focus

An old and a young man are travelling together. The old man reminds the young of his father, and the young man reminds the old of his wasted and meaningless life.