Croatian films achieve third-highest attendance levels at home in the last 15 years
- 39 local releases, including The Diary of Paulina P. and Cricket and Antoinette, as well as eight minority co-productions, sold a total of 278,053 admissions in 2023
The Croatian Audiovisual Centre, which in 2023 celebrated the 15th anniversary of its founding, has revealed that local films achieved the third-highest attendance levels ever in this period, following the bumper years of 2013 and 2012.
A total of 39 Croatian pictures were screened in local cinemas in 2023, out of which 28 were premieres, including 22 fiction features (eight of these are minority co-productions) and six documentaries (three are minority co-productions). They sold a combined total of 278,053 admissions, which represents a 26% increase on 2022.
Neven Hitrec's family-orientated The Diary of Paulina P. tops the local chart with 91,659 admissions, followed by Luka Rukavina's children's film Cricket and Antoinette [+see also:
film review
interview: Luka Rukavina
film profile], which won Best Screenplay and Music as well as the Audience Award at the national Pula Film Festival, and went on to sell 80,765 tickets.
Then there is a sharp drop with the populistic comedy Marginalci by Ljubomir Kerekeš, which sold 8,481 admissions in 2023, following its release in 2022 that accounted for 46,333.
Goran Kulenović's Death of the Little Match Girl sold 8,446 tickets, while Vanja Juranić's Only When I Laugh [+see also:
film review
film profile], winner of the Best Lead Actress Award for Tihana Lazović at Pula, which later had its international premiere in Sarajevo's Open Air programme, attracted 7,854 cinemagoers. Jasna Nanut's Seventh Heaven [+see also:
film review
film profile] garnered 7,573 admissions after its international premiere at Luxembourg's CinÉast and its opening slot at the Zagreb Film Festival, while Serbian director Radivoje Andrić's How I Learned to Fly added another 7,295 tickets to its 2022 tally of 33,643. Ivan Ramljak's DOK Leipzig competition entry El Shatt - A Blueprint for Utopia [+see also:
film review
film profile] was the highest-ranking documentary, in ninth position and with 5,788 admissions, and is followed by the minority co-production Infinity Pool [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by Brandon Cronenberg, which sold 5,156 tickets.
As mentioned above, 2023 is surpassed only by 2013, which saw a total of 436,074 admissions for releases that included mega-hits such as Vinko Brešan's The Priest's Children [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Vinko Bresan
film profile] and Silvije Petranović's The Brave Adventures of a Little Shoemaker [+see also:
trailer
film profile] as well as Dražen Žarković's The Mysterious Boy; and 2012, the year of Srdjan Dragojević's The Parade [+see also:
trailer
film profile], Tomislav Rukavina's Lara's Choice: The Lost Prince and Vlatka Vorkapić's Sonja and the Bull [+see also:
trailer
film profile].
In the general yearly box-office list, The Diary of Paulina P. ended up in fifth place and Cricket and Antoinette in sixth position in terms of attendance levels, after Barbie, Oppenheimer [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], Avatar: The Way of Water and The Super Mario Bros. Movie. Crotian films accounted for 13.5% of all releases, compared to 10.8% in 2022, and for 7.3% of the overall attendance, compared to 6.8% in the previous year.
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