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    • New Talents Open Call
      Eastern Neighbours Film Festival (ENFF) began in The Netherlands in 2008 with the idea to offer Dutch and international audiences a unique glimpse into the cinema of their neighbors from Eastern and Southern Europe. This annual event presents the most recent, exciting, and thought‐provoking films, from countries with small, but often powerful film industries, that… Read more: New Talents Open Call
    • ENFF 2023 On Demand!
      Unable To attend the festival in person? No problem! From November 27th to December 3rd, we’re thrilled to bring you a curated selection of this year’s films available for online viewing! Catch our captivating Opening Film Ivan’s Land, or the touching Closing Film Seventh Heaven. Or explore a collection of shorts from the New Talents Competition! Follow along… Read more: ENFF 2023 On Demand!
    • What’s up in Slovak Cinema? A conversation with Monika Lostakova
      We talked with Monika Lošťáková about contemporary Slovak cinema.
    • ENFF and the Eastern European Film Festival Network!
      The Eastern European Film Festival Network brings together five film festivals dedicated to promoting and showcasing Eastern European cinema, alongside one partner organisation.
    • Masterclasses
      Through these masterclasses we approach two memory in film from different angles: memories from a personal or collective recollection through archive material.
    • Work in Progress
      In Work in Progress, emerging filmmakers and artists will present their works in development to the audience and engage in discussions with Dutch experts.
    • Festival Timetable Available!
    • Check out the catalogue for our 2023 edition!
    • Music at ENFF
      Every year, ENFF brings special musical guests who bring beauty to the program and further represent the rich cultures of their countries to a Dutch audience.
    • Film Marathon
      Join us for the Film Marathon, a new concept in which we merge two components, Short Films, Big Stories, and New Talents Competition into a whole-day screening of short films!

El Shatt – A Blueprint for Utopia

dir. IVAN RAMLJAK 

DUTCH PREMIERE

A fascinating, rarely known, and deeply humane story from Croatia’s past. This important documentary remarkably combines archival material and living witnesses from the former Yugoslav refugee camp in the middle of the Egyptian desert. A new documentary from one of the programmers at International Film Festival Rotterdam.

Frozen and starved people on boats in the Mediterranean Sea fleeing from war. Familiar scenes that we are used to seeing in the news. But the year is 1944, and the refugees are travelling from Europe to Africa. After the Italian capitulation, and before the arrival of German army, 28,000 Dalmatian Croats left their homes to live for two years in tents in the Egyptian desert. A kind of communist model village, the camp was set up to show the Allies how Tito’s new Yugoslavia will look when the war ends. This is a story about them. The film is dedicated to Karlo Pansini, the director’s grandfather, who was one of the three doctors in El Shatt, a settlement near the Suez Canal.

SHOWTIMES | Special Guest: director Ivan Ramljak

Saturday, 25 November – 12:30

Buy Tickets Here!

EL SHATT – NACRT ZA UTOPIJU | 2023 | 96 min | Croatia, Serbia

PRODUCTIONTibor Keser – Kompot; Kino Klub Split, Horopter
SCREENPLAYIvan Ramljak
CINEMATOGRAPHYBoris Poljak
EDITINGJelena Maksimovic
SOUNDVladimir Zivkovic
LANGUAGECroatian, Arabic
SUBTITLESEnglish

FESTIVALS & AWARDS (SELECTION) 

Mediterranean Film Festival Split 2023 ― Special Jury Mention, Audience Award | Liburnia Film Festival, 2023 – Audience Award, Best Cinematographer, Best Editing | Pula Film Festival 2023 | DOK Leipzig, 2023 – International Documentary Competition

DIRECTOR’S BIO

Ivan Ramljak (1974) is a film director and independent curator. In 2003 he founded the Human Rights Film Festival in Zagreb. From 2013 to 2022 he was the editor of Short Tuesday, a short film program at Tuškanac Cinema in Zagreb. Since 2016, he has been the artistic director of the Tabor Film Festival, the oldest festival of short films in Croatia, and since 2022 he has been working as a programmer for the International Film Festival in Rotterdam. His films have been screened at more than 80 international festivals around the world (Cinéma du réel, DOK Leipzig, Sarajevo Film Festival, Dokufest, goEast…) and won several awards.