The producer of a Croatian Oscar contender claims the film was deceived by Croatian officials because the film’s themes, including the oppression of gay people by Yugoslavia’s former communist regime, were not to the government’s liking.
Ivona Giuca’s beautiful night beautiful day Croatia’s 12 professional film associations have unanimously chosen to represent the country in the Oscar competition for Best International Film. But the promotional funding provided by the Croatian Audiovisual Center to market the film to Oscar voters was far less than last year’s Croatian Oscar contender.
beautiful night, beautiful day Received €69,550 ($73,250) in promotional funds, less than half of Dubravka Turic’s budget trace last year (the film wasn’t nominated). Even more shockingly, Nebojša Slijepčević’s A man who cannot remain silentThe Oscar contender for best slice-of-life action short film received more than double that amount, 153,000 euros ($161,140), for its awards campaign.
“Our films deal with difficult topics from our country’s past and have explicit LGBTIQ+ content, so I can’t shake the feeling that the Croatian Ministry of Culture and the Croatian Audiovisual Center are cutting our budget with the clear intention of undermining our chances of winning an Oscar run,” Filmmaker Anita Giuca said in a statement. “We are now in a position where we need to cut back on our entire strategy and advertising, which is close to reality. [Oscar] vote. It’s ridiculous that the Croatian Audiovisual Center allocates such a disproportionate promotional budget between feature and short films.
beautiful night beautiful dayThis black-and-white drama set in the 1950s explores the persecution of the LGBTQ+ community in Yugoslavia under leader Josip Broz Tito. The film tells the story of a group of friends, former students who left college to join the partisans fighting the Nazis in World War II and who became critically acclaimed filmmakers after the war. But they have come under increasing scrutiny because of their sexual orientation. Dado Ćosić plays Lovro, a free-spirited director who suffers a nervous breakdown after being sent to an island penal colony.
The storyline is inspired by the real-life cases of approximately 500 gay men who were persecuted and imprisoned under Tito’s regime. Some were sent to the country’s notorious Desert Island, a penal colony in the northern Adriatic that was originally used to hold political prisoners. Yugoslavia’s ruling Communist Party officially criminalized homosexuality in 1959, a ban that was lifted in Croatia and the Republic of Slovenia in 1977 and not lifted in other parts of the former Yugoslavia until the dissolution of the country in the 1990s.
Arrivals: hollywood reporter A spokesman for the Croatian Audiovisual Center said the film’s producers submitted their application for award funding “very late” and that “only a few” board members were able to view the film before funding was approved. The spokesman said that while the subsidy level was lower than in the previous two years, “it is unclear whether [more marketing money] That made a difference in the outcome of the Oscars. Croatia has never been nominated for an Oscar in the best international film category since independence after the 1991 Yugoslav war.
Croatian Audiovisual Center says higher grant A man who cannot remain silent It’s because the film won the Palme d’Or for best short film at this year’s Cannes Film Festival and is a “great source of national pride” in Croatia. The spokesperson also noted that the film’s producers “submitted a very compelling application very early on.”
Due to a tight promotional budget, beautiful night beautiful day Instead, they’re running a guerilla awards campaign, which includes a screening of the film for Academy voters in Los Angeles this week.
Director Ivona Juka said in a statement: “With this budget, we can barely meet basic promotional needs, including hiring a publicist, booking cinemas in the United States, paying for travel and accommodation, not to mention “It’s disrespectful not to be treated equally, which is ironic because equality is the theme of our film. ”
The Academy will announce the long list of international feature film contenders on December 17 and the Oscar nominations on January 17.
You can check out the trailer beautiful night beautiful day the following.
