ZAGREB, 3 Oct, 2021 - The Dawn, an award-winning film directed and written by Dalibor Matanić, will premiere on HBO GO and the HBO channel on 7 October, the Croatian Audio Visual Centre (HAVC) announced earlier this week.

The second part of Matanić's trilogy (The High Sun, The Dawn and Sunset) traces Matija whose family is confronted with unresolved trauma, as their neighbours flee from the radicalism that divides them into the chosen ones and the undesirables. As Matija loses his faith and struggles to find his true self, the dawn breaks over the valley, revealing that the only way to deal with trauma and evil is to face them head-on, HAVC says on its website.

Tihana Lazović, Krešimir Mikić, Lara Vladović, Maks Kleončić, Nataša Matjašec Rošker and Marko Mandić make up the cast.

After its world premiere at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival in the autumn of 2020, the film was shown at the International Film Festival Karlovy Vary this summer, in the category of the most important films shown in the previous year.

At the Pula Film Festival, The Dawn won four Golden Arenas - for the best camera, editing, music and sound.

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September 23, 2020 – Following incredible success with Game Of Thrones, Mamma Mia and others, Croatia filming locations prove to be the best again as HBO's Succession wins 7 Emmys

Historic Dubrovnik was always pretty enough to attract people from far and wide. Dubrovnik has a lot of sights to visit. In addition, it offers many activities such as hiking, cycling, sailing, boat ride, Seabob experience etc. But, following its appearance in TV show Game Of Thrones, interest in visiting the walled city went through the roof. Tourists were not the only ones who wanted to come.

HBO drama Succession is just the latest hit to take advantage of the spectacular scenery while filming in Croatia. The show has just bagged no less than seven prestigious Emmy awards for the season partially filmed in Croatia. In the drama series category, it picked up Emmys for Best Leading Male Role, Best Guest Role, Best Casting, Best Directing, Best Screenplay and Best Picture Editing.

Cast members filmed aboard a yacht with beautiful Croatia and its Adriatic waters as the backdrop © HBO

The shooting took place over 12 days in July 2019, primarily on a yacht on which the show's central characters, the Roy family, were taking a holiday. The Croatia filming locations used were the waters around Cavtat, Korcula, Mljet and Sipan. The series ventured into more urban areas of Croatia and, for those scenes, filming locations in Zagreb and Rijeka were sourced. The German-built Solandge was the yacht used in the filming and costs as much as $1.1million (£850,000) to rent for one week.

The Roy family aboard the yacht Solandge in Croatian waters © HBO

Now in its third season, Succession centres on the dysfunctional Roy family, owners of a global media and hospitality empire. It stars British actor Brian Cox as the ailing family patriarch with Kieran Culkin heading up the otherwise all-American cast. A total of 613 people worked on the shooting of Succession in Croatia, of which 595 were Croatian (161 film workers, three trainees and 431 extras).

Solandge is currently one of the most luxurious yachts in the world © Moran Yachts

In recent years, major movies such as Star Wars, Robin Hood and one installment in the long-running James Bond series have joined the likes of Game Of Thrones and Mamma Mia in enjoying Croatia filming locations. However, filming in Croatia goes back much further than that. During the 1970s and early 1980s, no less than three Oscar-winning movies used Croatia filming locations - Fiddler on the Roof (1971), The Tin Drum (1979) and Sophie’s Choice (1982).

You can read more about filming in Croatia and Croatian filming locations by reading our dedicated section here

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We've already reported on the HBO executives scouting the Croatian coast for the locations to film some of their shows. It seems that we've found out at least a part of the reason why they were here a couple of months ago: a critic favourite show, Succession.

Dora Lozica writes for Dubrovački Vjesnik, and other media have additional stories about the filming of a part of the second season of HBO's hit show "Succession" in Southern Dalmatia: in Dubrovnik, Korčula and Cavtat. Succession is a satirical drama television series, centred on the fictional dysfunctional family which owns a global media empire and are fighting for control of the company amidst uncertainty about the health of the family's patriarch.

Dubrovnik is, of course, a veteran of HBO shows, but for Korčula this will be the first filming of such magnitude. Major Andro Fabris tells Lozica that the HBO crew will arrive at Korčula on July 17th, and that their entire equipment and yacht will be located in the area near the Leda shipyard. Most of the scenes filmed in Korčula will take place at the entrance to the Old Town, on the main square in front of the St. Mark's Cathedral and in the restaurant Cupido, which is located near the 5-star hotel Lešić Dimitri Palace. Some of the filmings will take place during the night-time, so they requested the lights in the town to be fully on for a bit longer, mayor Fabris explains. He added that they probably won't charge HBO for those services.

Konavle municipality at the same time reports that the riva (the waterfront) in Cavtat will be fully closed for traffic in the morning hours. We'll just have to wait and see if it's possible to accommodate such large productions in Dalmatian towns during high tourist season, without creating major disruptions in the already busy everyday lives.

After several recent success stories by some Croatian movies and TV shows on the various international broadcasting platforms, that we've already extensively written about (such as The Paper, You Carry Me and others), more good news coming from one of those platforms: Srbenka, a documentary by Nebojša Slijepčević is going to appear on HBO!

It premiered last year in Rijeka and has since received numerous awards at Croatian and international festivals (awards in Cannes, Sarajevo, Linz, Warsaw; the European Film Academy put it on their list of the top 15 European documentaries in 2018). The documentary's television premiere will take place on June the 20th on HBO.

The documentary, as we've already reported, follows the preparation and the rehearsals for the theatre play "Aleksandra Zec" by Oliver Frljić, which was performed at the Croatian Cultural Centre in Sušak, Rijeka. It deals with the devastating topics of nationalism and xenophobia through examining the lives of the children that are part of the Serbian minority, and who were born years after the Homeland War was finished. The title of the play is the name of the 12-year old girl who was killed along with the rest of her family on the eve of the Homeland War in Zagreb.

Nebojša Slijepčević, the director, said that he sees HBO as the most important production company in the world, that values the original documentaries which don't shy away from difficult topics. He's happy that Srbenka will be the first Croatian documentary on the platform, and he hopes that they will pave the road for other Croatian documentaries. He stresses the fact that many high-quality documentaries are made in Croatia, so he hopes that Srbenka won't be the sole entry in HBO's documentary catalogue. He hopes that Croatian audiences will get to see the documentary on Croatian Radiotelevision, not only on HBO.

After this story was originally published, HBO confirmed to us that Srbenka will be shown on HBO channels and later available online in the Adria Region (meaning Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Bulgaria). The premiere on the HBO channel will be on June 20th, at 9:25 pm, and it will be available online from June 1st.

And Vanja Jambrović, one of the producers of the film, confirmed on Facebook that Croatian Radiotelevision will not be showing this documentary, as she'd received an email informing her of that decision.

The story of "Success" has begun! It might sound like an invitation to a self-help course, and that is not completely off the mark, as you will be able to see soon when the first HBO TV-series filmed in the Croatian language is broadcast. The screenplay written by Marjan Alčevski is directed by Oscar-winning director Danis Tanović, and HBO is finishing the production of the TV series filmed in Zagreb, reports Večernji List on November 24, 2018.

“I often worked in countries of Central and Southeast Europe where we filmed screenplays written by famous screenwriters, but I noticed that we actually did nothing for the local authors. It was undeniable that there is raw talent here, and it was certainly possible that there were very good screenplays being written. We have therefore organized the First Draft competition, and now we have the first TV series from this language area, which has been selected among 400 applications,” said HBO Europe’s Steve Matthews.

Marjan Alčevski is understandably excited ahead of the launch. “First of all, it was hard to believe my screenplay would be filmed by Danis Tanović. I am happy with what has been done, I can see my story was made right, but the real excitement has only begun today because what the audience says is the only important thing,” said Alčevski.

The series filmed in Zagreb primarily deals with the life in the city through the stories of four characters that will be interwoven, but HBO expects that other cities from the neighboring countries will also be able to see themselves in Zagreb. According to Matthews, they did not look for a series that would deal with local political events, but an author who has something to say. For Tanović, this is the first TV series that he directed.

Ana Balentović of HBO Adria explained that they want to sell the series to other markets as well, adding that there is already interest in buying the rights for the United States. In addition to the casting that was extensive and thorough, the producers had other challenges as well.

“We had to change the shooting schedule a bit. When we started shooting, Zagreb looked more like Vladivostok, it was covered with snow and the temperature was extremely low. So we first filmed indoor scenes and then filmed all the night scenes outdoors in just ten days. We would like to thank the citizens of Zagreb who welcomed our production, but also the town and state authorities which allowed us to close the Youth Bridge for the shooting,” said Nebojša Taraba of the Drugi Plan production company.

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Translated from Večernji List (reported by Zoran Vitas).

The six-part drama series will be directed by Oscar-winner Danis Tanović