Passage for Stella
A film about a girl whose microcosm is confined not only by disease and disability, but also by cold-heartedness of her neighbors.
Ljiljana Šišmanović
Writer and director of numerous awarded documentaries, including ''The Last Bay of the Panonian Sea'', ''Half-sister'' and ''The Mark of Cain'', the latter one co-directed with Tihana Kopsa.
Ljiljana Šišmanović was born in Zagreb in 1970. She graduated in Croatian Language and Class Teaching from the Zagreb Faculty of Philosophy. Since 1994 she has worked on Croatian Radiotelevision (HRT) as Culture Program Editor. She is a member of Croatian Film Directors' Guild. Ljiljana has made some thirty documentary films, mostly produced by HRT. She won Jury Award for Best Script at the 13th Days of Croatian Film 2003, Best Documentary Award in the national competition of Tabor Film Festival 2005 and a few other awards.
Her best known documentaries, The Last Bay of the Panonian Sea (2002, dealing with old age, mortality and body decay) and The Mark of Cain (co-directed with Tihana Kopsa; a 2010 film about a young woman sentenced to eight years of prison for killing her husband in self-defense) were shown in official competition of national and international festivals (ZagrebDox, Days of Croatian Film, Tabor Film Festival, Liburnia Film Festival...). Her brilliant intimate documentary Half-sister (2006), in which she reveals unpleasant family secrets, was shown at the short film festival in Clermont-Ferrand.
Filmography
Sasvetani, Rokovci, Mihovilci, documentary (2002)
The Last Bay of the Panonian Sea, documentary (2002)
Woman's Choice, documentary (2005)
They Think that Working at the Gas Station Is Cooler, documentary (2005)
Half-sister, documentary (2006)
The Mark of Cain, documentary film (with Tihana Kopsa, 2010)