
Željko Senečić
Art
Biography
Željko Senečić was a Croatian film and television production designer, film director and screenwriter. Senečić studied painting at the Zagreb Academy of Fine Arts and scenography at the Zagreb Academy of Drama Arts. His career in filmmaking and production design began in the early 1960s. His most memorable films include the Palme d'Or and Academy Award-winning The Tin Drum (Die Blechtrommel, 1979; directed by Volker Schlöndorff and partially filmed in Zagreb, with Senečić credited as production co-designer) and classics of Croatian cinema such as Rondo (1966), One Song a Day Takes Mischief Away (Tko pjeva zlo ne misli, 1970). Senečić won four Golden Arena for Best Production Design awards, making him one of the most decorated production designers in Croatian cinema. He also co-wrote screenplays for films An Event (Događaj, 1969; directed by Vatroslav Mimica) and The House (Kuća, 1975; directed by Bogdan Žižić). Senečić also started directing short films in the late 1970s and then proceeded to make several feature films in the 1990s, such as Delusion (Zavaravanje, 1998) and Dubrovnik Twilight (Dubrovački suton, 1999).
Known For

The setting is a Central European kingdom, near the turn of the century. Bored by his very proper wife, the youthful heir to the throne spends his time in amorous dalliances at a sprawling country estate. His wife departs at the arrival of his friends, and they organize a celebration which becomes a wild orgy and culminates in death and tragedy.
Private Vices, Public Virtues

A renegade team of World War II soldiers. This time, one of the 12 is a woman and, with a Nazi spy within their midst, they're up against German wartime geniuses out to establish a Fourth Reich.
The Dirty Dozen: The Fatal Mission

Learning of a Nazi plot to attack Washington, D.C. with a deadly nerve gas, Major Wright leads twelve convicts on a suicide mission deep into occupied France to destroy the secret factory where the poison is made.
The Dirty Dozen: The Deadly Mission

An American journalist in Prague searches for his girlfriend who has suddenly disappeared.
Short Night of Glass Dolls

During WW2, a young student of medicine comes to the big city to discover the secret of death, and stays at a motel that turns out to be a brothel. He is asked from Ustasha officer to perform experiments of resurrecting the dead, while the Fascist authorities look for a female communist hiding in the city.
Devil's Due

Inspector Vinko is a comedy miniseries starring Ivica Vidović, Zoja Odak and Mustafa Nadarević.
Inspector Vinko

1815. A soldier becomes the governor of St. Helena and jailer of Napoleon
Eagle in a Cage

A young married woman Jelena finds about her husband's car accident from an unknown stranger named Vlatko, but also that he wants to be visited by his mistress rather than her. The encounter with her father, an ex-politician, will be another shock, but that's when she accepts Vlatko's courtship without being able to see his self-interested nature.
The Scene of the Crash

In Norway a military plane crashes under mysterious circumstances: in his last message the pilot reported many lights falling from the sky. NATO wants to play down the incident, but the famous TV moderator George Abbot and the no less persistent journalist Milker sense a sensational story about UFOs and start snooping around in the area with help of pilot "Bird" McNamara. Inspired by the suspiciously rigorous isolation of the whole area around the crash point and cases of an unknown disease they have a closer look at the military's activities...
Project Alien

Group of concentration camp prisoners is being constantly tortured by their Kappo. Since they are too weak to stand against him, they pick the strongest among themselves and feed him with parts of their rations.
The Fed One

Based on a true story. Near the end of World War II, two German deserters are put in an Allied POW camp. When a rigid and militaristic German colonel learns about their desertion, he wants them court-martialed, even if the war is over. The uninterested Allied officers oblige him, and the two men face the firing squad on "the fifth day of peace".
The Fifth Day of Peace

In June of 1942 Germans and their collaborators decide to get rid of partisans and their stronghold in the woods of Mount Kozara in Northern Bosnia. They encircle the mountain and begin the mop up operation. Out gunned and outnumbered the partisans must not only take care of themselves but try to protect thousands of refugees too.
Kozara

A beautiful but ailing girl is married to a harsh man who doesn't care for her. Only after she dies does he realize that he actually loves her.
The Birch Tree

The story of an inter-generational conflict between two brothers of completely different political and secular views.
Illusion

The story concerns the Yugoslavian holiday of two toothsome Swedish girls. One of the girls, played by Maria Liljedahl, is (metaphorically speaking) a world-champion in the promiscuity sweepstakes, bedding men (and women) in great profusion. Somehow, the movie also manages to be about film reviewers and film directors. Variety) commented '...the film's inherently good visual and physical qualities are themselves dissipated in [the director's] cynicism, ennui, and involuted intellectual mirror tricks.'
Ann and Eve

Segment "Duga ulica" (A Long Street): A young man named Boris and a girl, Vera, live in the same neighborhood. They meet one night when she loses her key. Boris invites her to spend the night at his place; Segment "Čekati" (To Wait): Married students, Ivan and Sonja, live in an old woman's apartment. She is sick and the couple hopes that she will die soon, so that they may inherit her apartment; Segment "Poslije predstave" (After the Play): A husband and a wife lose the key to their apartment and have to spend the night in a hotel. The experience is wonderful and renews their feelings for each other, if only for a night.
The Key

After returning from the Eastern Front to their small Croatian village as veterans of the First World War, Jovan Stanisavljević (nicknamed Čaruga) and his comrade known only as Mali join forces with the gang led by a local bandit and communist revolutionary Boža The Red. After Boža is brutally murdered by law enforcement officials, Čaruga takes over as the gang's leader, turning them into a bloodthirsty troop that won't take no for an answer.
Charuga

A tense detective movie about Eva Ružić, an accountant in a large firm, who was sentenced to 7 years in prison for embezzlement of public property.
Back of the Medal

A corrupt village commissar insists on mounting a production of Hamlet. The clever local teacher, however, casts the son of a man framed for theft as Hamlet, and the commissar as the usurping king, leading to a climax of truly Shakespearean proportions.
A Performance of Hamlet in the Village of Mrdusa Donja

Musicologist and professor Kosor wakes up in a hospital. He has survived a serious car accident. In a bed next to his lies the amiable economist Gajski, whose wife Melita regularly visits him. This unusually beautiful woman is the first person that Kosor sees after he gains consciousness and is completely enchanted by her. Kosor becomes obsessed by Melita’s physical beauty and her trustworthy character and begins a risky game of writing and sending her anonymous love letters…