Big Stamp, the Grand Prix award of the ZagrebDox, an international documentary film festival, went to "Returns" by the Polish author Krzysztof Kadlubowski, at an award-giving ceremony in the Movieplex cinema theatre in Zagreb on Saturday evening.
This short black-and-white film is a record of events that took place after 10 April 2010, one of the most important dates in modern Polish history. On that day, 96 people, including the Polish president Lech Kaczynski and government representatives died in a plane crash near Smolensk. They were on their way to Russia to participate in a ceremony commemorating the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre, the mass murder of Polish officers carried out by the NKVD. The seven-minute film is about the ceremony of the state funeral.
Big Stamp for the best film in the regional competition programme went to the "A Day on the Drina" by Ines Tanovic from Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is about the discovery of body remains of more than 250 incomplete skeletons in the artificial lake "Perucac". The remains of Bosniak victims, killed by the Serb forces during the war, were found in August 2010 during the repair work on turbines of the hydroelectric power plant Bajina Basta.
More than 150 documentary stories from all over the world were screened during the eighth edition of the festival, which took place in Zagreb from 26 August to 3 March.
The ZagrebDox will formally end on Sunday with a ceremony of giving the award to the best film chosen by the public.
