Slavica Habjanović

Festival Director

With a love of culture, communications and the media, most of my professional life has centred around the phenomenal things humans are capable of creating – literature, art and film.

I was born and raised in Melbourne, moving to Zagreb with my parents in my teens. There I completed high school and university, following which I began work as a court translator for an interpreting firm. Publishing had always been my passion, and paired with a desire to experience Melbourne as an adult, I came back to study publishing and communications at the University of Melbourne after over a decade of living in Croatia.

My desire to establish a Croatian film festival in Australia arose from a love of Croatian film. I witnessed a renaissance of the Croatian film industry during the 2000s – the reels being churned out had shifted to being grimly realistic, darkly comic, edgy and daring, touching upon topics that had been taboo for a long time. The more Croatian films I saw, the more I wanted to bring them to Australian audiences.

The experience of organising the first ever Croatian Film Festival has been amazing, scary, exhilarating and exhausting. The people I have met on this journey have been incredible and without them this Festival would not be possible. The Croatian community have come together to help create something I am sure will be here for many years to come, while non-Croatians have embraced the opportunity to take part in a very special Festival.

Thank you to each and every individual who has been involved in making this event possible. I truly hope that you will have as much fun watching the films as the team and I have had in preparing this event for you.

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Ana Vranjkovic

Marketing & Sponsorship Manager

As a Public Relations and Marketing Consultant, it is my job to help businesses successfully promote their products and services to customers and the media at large.

I began my career as a journalist and soon found myself in a challenging role as the youngest editor of a trade publication within the Australian heavy transport industry. It was a fast learning curve to all things industrial and so began my journey of helping grass roots Australian businesses in the manufacturing, transport and building sector to promote their brand, their people and their identity in a fiercely competitive marketplace.

It wasn’t until I was able to branch out on my own and run my own consultancy that I began to understand the enormous challenges that Australian businesses face when marketing in this globalised climate.

My work with the Croatian Film Festival was accidental at first, and born out of a desire to share my skills and do business with other Croatian Australians, embracing  our ancestry in a uniquely Australian way.

What better way to join the generations and the nations than through the internationally recognised medium of film?

As the Sponsorship and Marketing Manager of an inaugural event  - the challenges are always great. Yet the opportunity to network and meet other second and third generation Croatian Australians who are talented and passionate, brave and bright is a major milestone in making sure we embrace the fabric that made this country so great – multiculturalism.

I look forward to continuing our promotional activities in the lead up to the festival and meeting more uniquely talented individuals in our community.

Contact Ana

Nives Antoljak

Project Co-Ordinator in Croatia, Croatian Heritage Foundation

I am extremely proud to be a part of the Croatian Film Festival team. It all started off with a simple request which we often receive here at the Croatian Heritage Foundation – to collate films for a retrospective on Croatian cinema. I expected a few DVDs to be enough – but little did I know! I was told that the most prestigious cinema complex in Australia had been hired out and that sponsors were jumping on board, and soon I was sent a long list of films which needed to be provided in the most professional of formats. I started contacting directors, producers, the Croatian Tourist Association, the Croatian Audio-Visual Centre, the Croatian Film Archive...it turned out to be an extremely serious project driven by a few enthusiasts from Melbourne. We have managed to turn a beautiful idea into a professional project, popularise it and gain the support of a large number of Croatians and Australians alike. A great example of this support is the smiles on people's faces when I ask them if they agree for their films to be shown in Melbourne!

This young team has managed to do the best possible job on this project, starting with this wonderful website. Through the site, I have met the other members of the team, while I have met Slavica in person and have witnessed her excellent knowledge of Croatian cinematography as well as her willingness to undertake hard work.

The Croatian Heritage Foundation supports this project, and in my capacity as Project Co-Ordinator in Croatia, I am doing my best to help with all aspects of the project, right up until its completion. I would like to congratulate the organisers and hope that other cities in Australia will follow suit, as it will be of incredible importance to Croatians living in Australia as well as their friends. Through this project, they will be introduced to Croatian film while Australian film lovers will have the chance to enjoy in the fruits of our young film industry. The immense amount of work that has gone into this project will be congratulated with sold out sessions – let Croatian film be seen in Australia for the first time ever!

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Andre Camilleri

Graphic Designer and Web Developer

There really is no place like multicultural Melbourne and we are lucky to be able to experience the best the world has to offer right on our doorstep. The Croatian Film Festival is my case in point. It's such a buzz to be directly involved in this exciting new film festival, which I am sure will prove to be a great success and regular fixture in the city's events calendar. If you are tired of the same, same Hollywood throws at us you will love every single frame of the many films on offer.

Andre Camilleri is a country singer/songwriter by night and freelance web and graphic designer by day. He keeps forgetting he is a first time dad and there really is not much time for anything else at the moment. He is totally cool with that. Andre moved to Australia in 2000 and isn’t planning on going anywhere else too soon.

Visit Andre at thewebdudes.com.au

Victoria Khroundina

Event Co-Ordinator and Trailer Producer and Editor

I love organising almost as much as I love film...I love it so much that I hope to be the next Margaret from 'At the Movies' (it's either that or the opportunity to sit so close to David!). My involvement in the Festival is thus self-explanatory, and ranges from marketing to sponsorship to event management to writing and producing the Festival trailer. I am very honored to be involved in the the first-ever Croatian Film Festival to be held in Australia. Coming from a Slavic background, and having an immense love for foreign cinema, the opportunity to showcase films from a completely fresh international film industry is one that excites me very much. Currently, I am working at RMIT's College of Business Innovation Unit doing what I do best: editing, researching and organising. When I'm not working, I am doing the other thing I do best: watching films. I call it research.

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Katarina Mučić

Event Co-Ordinator

When I’m not shopping or teetering around in ridiculously high heels, I work full time in corporate communications in the financial services industry. I’m also completing a degree in journalism at Monash University.  Among my great loves are shoes, chocolate, pavlova and Croatian music. I am very proud of my Croatian heritage and am so proud to be a part of the Croatian Film Festival. I think it is a great way to raise the profile of Croatia and also the Croatian community in Australia.

It was love at first sight with Katarina. Her unmistakable sense of style, fun and journalistic inquisitiveness have been utilised to the maximum during the preparation of the Festival. Katarina also has a particular knack for mad midnight emailing.

Andy McPherson

Festival Trailer Director, Author, Producer and Editor

Andy was too modest to write anything about himself here - but we would just like to say what a fantastic job he has done with the official Festival Trailer (let's just say our budget was in the low three-digit area). He came to us with a story, the people and the passion to carry it all out.

A student of film and an avid film lover, you will most often see him at one of Melbourne's many film festivals. Or, you just might bump into him walking around Melbourne Uni, talking to random people.