Motovun, Croatia: the Motovun Film Festival Features Outdoor Movies in Croatia

About the Festival

Motovun Film Festival is dedicated entirely to films from small cinematographies and independent productions -- works that broke through by innovation, ideas, and the power of their stories. Held in a small medieval hilltop town in Istria, Croatia, it is a five-day film marathon running from 10 a.m. to 4 a.m., with outdoor evening screenings alternating with daytime theatre showings. The programme spans roughly 70 titles: documentaries, features, shorts, and long-form work, from guerrilla productions to international co-productions. The only selection criterion is that a film fit the festival's open-minded, non-Hollywood spirit.

Why Motovun?

The festival was founded in 1999 -- the year cinema theatres across Croatia were closing -- to screen the films that weren't being shown anywhere else. On the opening day of the first edition, not a single non-Hollywood film was playing in Croatian cinemas out of the approximately 3,000 non-studio titles produced worldwide each year. The organizers renovated a long-closed theatre in Motovun and turned the main square into an outdoor movie venue. The festival celebrated its tenth edition with the 2008 programme.