One of the most important Croatian directors and scriptwriters, a member of the so called Prague Film School and author of numerous fiction and documentary films shown and awarded at the most prestigious world festivals. He is the founder of Motovun Film Festival and is today its ''artistic director, honorably retired''.
Rajko Grlić was born in Zagreb in 1947. He obtained his degree in Film Directing from FAMU in Prague. He directed and co-wrote eleven feature-length films. His films were shown in regular theatrical release on five continents. They were also shown in competition programs of major world festivals and have received numerous international awards. In addition to that, Rajko wrote ten scripts for produced fiction films and TV series.
He won numerous awards for his scripts, including UNESCO Award, FIPRESCI Award at Cannes Film Festival and Peter Kastner Award. He had an intensive scriptwriting cooperation with Serbian filmmaker Srđan Karanović, also a member of the so-called Prague Film School (they co-wrote two Grlić's films and three Karanović's films, as well as Karanović's iconic TV series Reckless Years). He also directed three documentary TV series and a dozen short feature films. He wrote, directed and produced the CD ROM How to Make Your Movie: An Interactive Film School. The CD ROM won him eight international film awards, including Grand Award for Best Multimedia Project at New York Film Festival 1998.
He launched Motovun Film Festival and Grožnjan Imaginary Academy and was also their Artistic Director. In 2001, together with Igor Mirković, he directed Croatia 2000: Who Wants to Be a President, a documentary film on the democratic changes that had taken place in Croatia after President Franjo Tuđman's death. Croatia 2000: Who Wants to Be a President was the first feature-length documentary film in independent Croatia to have a theatrical release and to become a major box-office hit. Grlić is currently Ohio Eminent Scholar in Film at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio.