Katarina Zrinka Matijević
Directing
Biography
Katarina Zrinka Matijević graduated in 2002 from the Zagreb Academy of Dramatic Arts with a degree in Film and TV Directing. She also earned her Philosophy and Comparative Literature degree from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb. In addition to writing scripts and directing documentary and feature films, she is a docent at VERN College of Applied Sciences where she teaches Introduction to Documentary Film Directing. Zrinka first gained public attention with her award-winning student film Duel (1998). Her first professional documentary On Cows and Men (2002, co-directed by Nebojša Slijepčević) has been screened at major international festivals such as IDFA, Munich, etc. In 2003, she filmed Peščenopolis. Her documentary A Two Way Mirror (2016) received an Oktavijan Award, and has been screened at a number of prestigious documentary festivals. Her first feature film, The Trampoline, premiered in the summer of 2016. After numerous screenings at international festivals, the film is used to educate staff at clinics for paediatric and adolescent psychology and psychiatry throughout Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Known For
The Trampoline is not a romantic love story - it is a film about a powerful and sometimes double-edged love, and the darker side of a mother-daughter bond that has been stretched to breaking point.
The Trampoline
Pescenica is an old industrial suburb of Zagreb. As a satirical depiction of Croatia's recent politics, it has been declared independent republic. What's it like there today? Over a year, the film crew was combing streets, avenues, parks and backyards, focusing on the lives of four Pescenica inhabitants: its self-proclaimed president, a teacher in a Roma school, a cleaning lady in a film distribution company and a young stage director. All that in order to portray Pescenopolis, the film's protagonist that floats between mud and clouds.
Pescenopolis
Milan and Silvana live in Medulin, a small coastal town in Croatia. Milan rears cows on the nearby island of Finera, tending them daily, as many did before him. But Silvana wants much more and keeps complaining that Milan should pay more attention to their house and possibly rent it to tourists. However, a dramatic event in Milan's life will clearly show that the times have changed and they are not getting any younger.
On Cows and Men
A five-year-old boy is completely uninterested in food, which results in conflicts with his mother. The effort she invests in feeding him is equal to the boy’s effort not to eat the offered food. The longer the lunch, the clumsier is their balance on the verge of fight. The duel between the boy’s resourcefulness and the spoon, the tears and mother’s love, ends with the victory of the more persistent. The last bites are either left on the plate, or leave with the boy to bed in his mouth.
Duel
The breath-taking yet cold mountain landscapes of Lika shown in this poetic documentary intimate one’s state of mind, inner struggles and revelations. While Zrinka films the spectacular and cruel sights of the region, that very same Lika paints the contours of the director herself, as she revisits experiences of her ancestors and her own experiences in a search for the key for accepting her epilepsy and overcoming previous losses.
A Two Way Mirror
Through a series of interviews with randomly selected parents, Katarina Zrinka Matijević explores the ups and downs of parenthood in the contemporary Balkan sphere, uncovering almost as much about the couples as she does about herself.