Ognjen Sviličić
Croatian screenwriter and film director
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Ognjen Sviličić (born 1971 in Split) is a screenwriter and film director, based in Berlin, noted for his critically acclaimed 2007 films Sorry For Kung Fu, Armin and These Are the Rules.
Premiere: Mannheim 2000
“Sorry for Kung fu” 2003 75 min, Croatia Premiere: Berlinale, Forum of new cinema 2004 Grand Prix Warsaw film festival 2004
“Armin” 2007, 84 min, Croatia, Germany, Bosnia and Herzegovina Premiere: Berlinale, Forum of new cinema 2007 FIPRESCI prize, best foreign film Palms Springs 2008 East of the west award, Karlovy Vary 2008
“Two Sunny Days” 2010, 78 min, Croatia Premiere: Warsaw 2011
“These are the Rules” 2014, 78 min Croatia, France, Serbia, North Macedonia Premiere: Venice, Orizzonti, 2014 Best Actor Venice Orizzonti, 2014 Best director Warsaw 2015 Best director Les Arcs 2015
“The Voice” 2019, 80 min Croatia, Serbia, North Macedonia
Premiere. Busan 2019Ognjen Sviličić | |
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| Born | 1971 (age 54–55) Split, Yugoslavia |
| Years active | 1999–present |
| Awards | “I Wish I Where a Shark” 2000, 70 min, Croatia
Premiere: Mannheim 2000 “Sorry for Kung fu” 2003 75 min, Croatia Premiere: Berlinale, Forum of new cinema 2004 Grand Prix Warsaw film festival 2004 “Armin” 2007, 84 min, Croatia, Germany, Bosnia and Herzegovina Premiere: Berlinale, Forum of new cinema 2007 FIPRESCI prize, best foreign film Palms Springs 2008 East of the west award, Karlovy Vary 2008 “Two Sunny Days” 2010, 78 min, Croatia Premiere: Warsaw 2011 “These are the Rules” 2014, 78 min Croatia, France, Serbia, North Macedonia Premiere: Venice, Orizzonti, 2014 Best Actor Venice Orizzonti, 2014 Best director Warsaw 2015 Best director Les Arcs 2015 “The Voice” 2019, 80 min Croatia, Serbia, North Macedonia Premiere. Busan 2019 |
Career
Sviličić was born 1971 in Split, in a family of journalists.[1] He started his career with a series of TV features which had a mixed critical response. At the beginning of the 2000s, Sviličić often worked as a co-writer or script doctor on films by other directors (What Iva Recorded by Tomislav Radić, The Melon Route by Branko Schmidt).[2][3] Many of the directors with whom he worked made significantly better films than usual while co-working with Sviličić. Sviličić was therefore sometimes nicknamed "Mabuse of Croatian cinema", who "resurrects [directors] from the dead".[1][4]
Sviličić's first international success was the comedy Sorry for Kung Fu,[1] in which a young woman from the Dalmatian highlands comes back from Germany to her native village. Girl (Daria Lorenci) is pregnant, but does not reveal the identity of the father. Their old-fashioned parents try to find a husband for her, but she stubbornly refuses. The film was screened in a Forum program of Berlinale.
Sviličić's next film, Armin, was also screened in Berlin Forum. That is the story about a teenage musician and his simpleton father who travel from Bosnia to Zagreb to audition for a German coproduction film. Son is skeptical and bitter, and father is naive and overtly enthusiastic for anything that is "Western" and "European".[5]
His next internationally recognised film was These Are the Rules, premiered in the Orrizonti section at the Venice Film Festival, where it won the award for the best actor.[2]
Sviličić is continually working as a script writer, he wrote the script for "The Father" together with director Srdan Golubović (Premiere Berlinale 2020, Panorama audience award).[6][7]
He was working as a script consultant for many European script development platforms like First Film First, EAVE or Nipkow Program. At the Academy of Dramatic Art in Zagreb, he has worked as a screenwriting tutor, later he started teaching at a smaller art academy in Široki Brijeg in Bosnia Herzegovina.[8]
Sviličić signed the Declaration on the Common Language of the Croats, Serbs, Bosniaks and Montenegrins.[9]
Filmography
- Wish I Were a Shark (Da mi je biti morski pas) (1999) — writer and director
- Sorry for Kung Fu (Oprosti za kung fu) (2004) — writer and director
- What Iva Recorded (Što je Iva snimila 21. listopada 2003.) (2005) — writer
- The Melon Route (Put lubenica) (2006) — writer
- Armin (2007) — writer and director
- Metastases (2009) — writer
- Two Sunny Days (2010) — writer and director
- These Are the Rules (2014) — writer and director
- We Will Be the World Champions (2015) — writer
- The Voice (2019) — writer and director
- Father (2020) — writer