In collaboration with the Pula Film Festival and the Dubrovnik Cinemas, the Dubrovnik Summer Festival will be showing the best Croatian feature film from Pula at the Jadran open-air cinema, on Wednesday, 24 July at 9.30pm. This year, the traditional free screening of the winning Croatian film brings the smash hit of the 66th Pula Film Festival, the Diary of Diana B, a “true story about the best of people and the worst of times,” by director Dana Budisavljević.

Besides the Grand Golden Arena for Best Festival Film, the Diary of Diana B also won the Golden Arena for Editing, along with the audience award the Golden Gate of Pula. All were won unanimously - as the explanatory supplement to the award announcement expounds, “the director authentically interweaves the fictional, the documentary and the historical, thus rhetorically drawing the audience into the story.”  Furthermore, it was deemed that the approach to the exceptionally important historical subject matter was germane, convincing the viewers of the subject’s relevancy and significance. The award-winning “precise editing,” as explained, “harmonises all segments of the narrative and shapes the rhythm structure of the whole film.”

This 88-minute docufiction drama tells the story of the perilous efforts of Diana Budisavljević and her friends. Diana is motivated by a firm belief that her own life is no more precious than the lives of the innocent people being persecuted, rescuing more than 10,000 children from the Ustasha camps in Nazi-occupied Croatia. Although at first working in her favour, in the midst of historical turmoil, Diana’s Austrian descent becomes a burden, which ultimately results in her story – one of the biggest humanitarian stories of World War II – being left untold.

Dana Budisavljević (Zagreb, 1975) graduated from the Academy of Dramatic Art in Zagreb, Department of Film and TV Editing. She has worked as editor, production assistant, and organiser of film festivals. Her directorial debut was the documentary Straight A’s (Factum, 2004), and she has gained popularity with a family film on coming out Family Meals (2012). She has worked as a producer on Slumbering Concrete by Saša Ban, films I Like That Super Most the Best by Eva Kraljević, Then I See Tanja by Juraj Larotić, and others. The Diary of Diana B. is her first feature film.

The film was produced by Hulahop of Croatia, and coproduced by December (Slovenia) and This And That (Serbia) productions.