During the six days of the Festival, participants and audiences will have the opportunity to enjoy film screenings in unique locations, such as the exceptional ambience of the fortress of the Franciscan Monastery – Lopud 1483, and the beach of RMH Lopud Lafodia Resort & Wellness. The first film, multiple-award-winning crime drama Fargo, directed by Joel Coen and starring Frances McDormand, will be shown on the first evening on both locations. The film received the Best Director Award at Cannes Film Festival in 1996 and two Academy Awards, Best Screenplay (Joel and Ethan Coen) and Best Actress in a Leading Role (Frances McDormand) as well as nominations for Best Motion Picture and Best Actor in a Supporting Role (William H. Macy).

The next film to be screened is Nomadland, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2020 and won its director Chloe Zhao the Golden Lion for the Best Film. The success of Nomadland was subsequently crowned with three Academy Awards: Best Actress in a Leading Role (Frances McDormand), Best Director (Chloe Zhao) as well as Best Motion Picture (Frances McDormand, Peter Spears, Mollye Asher, Dan Janvey, Chloe Zhao).

The audiences will also have the opportunity to attend screenings of two more films from the rich opus of the Coen brothers – A Serious Man and Burn After Reading.

A Serious Man tells a story set in an environment similar to the one where the Coen brothers grew up. Extremely suggestive and thoughtful directing, focus on odd characters, bizarre settings, absurd situations, extraordinary realistic dialogues, great performances and witty exploration of fatalism and attitudes towards religion and God, are all the characteristics of this black humorous existential drama, which was nominated for the 2010 Academy Award for Best Motion Picture and Best Original Screenplay, the Golden Globe for Best Film and the BAFTA for Best Screenplay.

Burn After Reading is a film about the absurdity of human relationships, starring some of the greatest Hollywood names, such as Brad Pitt, George Clooney, John Malkovich, Tilda Swinton and Frances McDormand.

The program also includes Compartment No. 6, a feature film by a Finnish director Juho Kuosmanen and this year’s lecturer at acting and directing workshops. It premiered at Cannes Film Festival in 2021, where it was awarded Grand Prix from the jury, securing its subsequent success at Festivals. Based on a Rosa Liksom’s novel, it follows a young Finnish woman Laura (Seidi Haarla), who escapes an enigmatic love affair with her literature professor in Moscow by boarding a train to the Arctic port of Murmansk.

Navalny, a documentary film by Daniel Roher, which premiered in 2022 at Sundance Film Festival, will be shown at an exclusive screening at the Ponta Lopud Festival in the fortress of the Franciscan Monastery – Lopud 1483. The film tells a story about the events surrounding the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny and the subsequent investigation into it.

For the closing evening, Ponta Lopud Festival announces a music and film spectacle, a screening of Birdman in the unique ambience of the Franciscan Monastery – Lopud 1483, accompanied by a four-time Grammy winner Antonio Sanchez, who will play the drum score live in front of the audience. Birdman premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2014 and subsequently won four Oscars – Best Motion Picture (Alejandro G. Iñárritu, John Lesher, James W. Skotchdopole) Best Achievement in Directing (Alejandro G. Iñárritu) Best Screenplay (Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Nicolas Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris, Armando Bo) and Best Achievement in Cinematography (Emmanuel Lubezki). Antonio Sanchez won the 2016 Grammy Award for his Birdman score.

Tickets for film screenings and boat transfers are available through Entrio online system: www.entrio.hr or directly by following this LINK.