After its first screening at Black Nights in Tallinn, an A category festival where it also won a special award from the jury for direction, the film “Pelican” by Filip Heraković will have its Croatian premiere at FMFS on 16 June.

The humorous drama about a football player who experiences an identity crisis after a serious knee injury arrives with the Brave Balkans award, awarded at the Belgrade Auteur Film Festival (FAF).

- We eagerly await the premiere screening of “Pelican” in front of the Croatian audience and we are overjoyed that it will take place as part of the Mediterranean Film Festival Split. I believe that it is a festival full of spirit related to our film and I am extremely happy to meet its audience - said director Filip Heraković.

The Anti-fascist Resistance Day on 22 June at FMFS will be marked by the world premiere of the film "El Shatt – a Blueprint for Utopia". The documentary film directed by Ivan Ramljak brings stunning footage and the story of 28 thousand Dalmatians who were evacuated to Egypt by Tito, with the help of the Allies, and in tents in the middle of the desert they simulated a kind of communist settlement model that was supposed to show the West what the new Yugoslavia would look like with the end of World War II.

- After almost five years of work, which included, among other things, two years of research, interviewing a large number of 90-year-olds in the midst of the worst pandemic, and traveling to two additional continents, I am extremely glad that the time has come for the premiere of the film. FMFS is the most appropriate place for that given its topic, in the heart of Dalmatia, and precisely on the Anti-fascist Resistance Day - said director Ivan Ramljak, whose work has been following this festival for a decade.

The 16th edition of the Mediterranean Film Festival Split, three weeks after the premiere in Cannes, will open with “The Real Truth about the Fight”, with which director Andrea Slaviček was included in the Critic's Week programme of the world's largest film festival. In the short film, we follow a teenage girl who tells the real truth about a big fight, but at the same time we get a hint that there is something she doesn't want to tell us.

A spot of another one of the world premieres at this Split festival was also reserved for Karla Lulić, whose film “Split Ends” stars Ivana Roščić and Judita Franković Brdar, as well as Ivan Efendić in the story of the self-taught painter Mate from a small village in Dalmatian Hinterland, and debutant Krešimir Štulina in the film “Unleashed” in which the main character is faced with a dilemma: whether to continue the party with friends or go in search of the dog. After the premiere in the programme of the International Film Festival in Rotterdam, the audience will be the first in Croatia to see “Ingresso Animali Vivi” directed by Igor Grubić.

In addition to these premieres in the Ješke programme, where a short Croatian film is given prime time slots in front of a large audience, Rino Barbir's “Zof”, Sunčica Fradelić’s “While We Were Here”, “Her Dress for the final” by Martina Meštrović, and “Dancing on the Grave” by Ana Šiškov are competing for the festival’s award Udica which entails a 2500 euro reward.

The organizers do not hide their satisfaction that more and more local authors submit their new films to FMFS.

- Our festival profiled itself not only as an important venue for domestic premiers, but our alternative distribution model also proved to be successful. Namely, after the FMFS, feature films will continue their journey throughout Dalmatia through the Kina Mediteran tour, and the audience will also have the opportunity to watch shorter ones from the Ješke programme during the summer. This synergy of FMFS and cinema distribution attracts numerous authors, and when we add to that the charm of the Bačvice Open-Air Cinema and premieres in front of a full audience, we get that special feature that sets us apart from other festivals - said Alen Munitić, artistic director of FMFS and Kino Mediteran.

Tickets for the 16th FMFS, held at four Split locations 15 - 24 June, go on sale online on 4 June.