Dalibor Matanić

Dalibor Matanić was born in Zagreb in 1973. He graduated in Film and TV Directing from the Zagreb Academy of Dramatic Art. He has directed, wrote and co-wrote a series of internationally awarded feature-length and short fiction films such as The Cashier Wants to Go to the Seaside (2000), Fine Dead Girls (2002), Draught (2002), 100 Minutes of Glory (2004), I Love You (2005), The Lika Cinema (2008), Party (2009), Mother of Asphalt (2010), Mezzanine (2011) i Daddy (2011). His first feature-length film The Cashier Wants to Go to the Seaside won Breza Award for Best Debutant at Pula Film Festival 2000 and Best European Debutant Award at Cottbus East European Film Festival 2000. His Fine Dead Girls won seven awards at Pula Film Festival 2002, including Grand Prix – Golden Arena for Best Film. Numerous reviews proclaimed it the best Croatian film in the past ten years.

In the beginning of his career, Matanić was also noted for the documentaries he had either directed (Derby) or co-directed with Tomislav Rukavina and Stanislav Tomić (Metropolis, BAG and Good Luck). In 2002, he finished the short film Draught (the first of the short-film hexalogy about innermost problems of girls around the world), shown in Director’s Fortnight Program of Cannes Film Festival. The second and third films of the hexalogy, Party and Mezzanine, won Hearts of Sarajevo for Best Short Film in 2009 and 2011, respectively. Dalibor is a member of the European Film Academy and the laureate of City of Zagreb Culture Award.