Tabor New Frame Film Festival 2025
Deep sorrow, tenderness and identity
in the focus of student films at the
Tabor New Frame Film Festival
As part of the Student Competition at this year’s Tabor New Frame Film Festival, a total of 26 films will be screened. Alongside ten Croatian student films, special attention is drawn to the selection of international works by authors who dive deeply into themes of identity, memory, family relationships, and personal transformation. Their films, diverse in genre and refined in style, testify to the remarkable breadth and maturity of the new generation of filmmakers. The winners of this competition will be decided by a three-member jury consisting of producer Sabina Krešić, director Mladen Stanić, and actress Maruška Aras.
In Icebergs by director Carlos Pereira (Germany), we follow Theo, who seeks emotional connection with a friend while struggling with his own fragility and loneliness. His subtle disintegration is portrayed with rare tenderness and visual minimalism. The film will have its Croatian premiere at Tabor.
From Ukraine comes The sun shines, but doesn't heat by director Oleksandr Kosiak, which will have its world premiere at the festival. The film documents the emotional meeting of 17-year-old Katia with the mother she has not seen for more than a decade, after the latter was deported from Poland. Katia’s struggle to free herself from a toxic family dynamic and begin a new independent life is told with exceptional delicacy and restrained yet devastating emotion.
Perishable Idol by Majid Al Remaihi (France/Qatar/Kuwait) tells the story of an archaeologist returning to the abandoned island of Failaka, where he confronts his past, his identity, and forgotten history. This poetic documentary connects personal and collective memory, the ruins of childhood, and geopolitical changes in the region.
BAFTA-nominated Adiós (United Kingdom), an animated film by José Prats, manages in just eight minutes to convey generational pain and emotional distance between a father and son. During a silent hunting trip, the two men avoid words but not feelings, as they face the illness of their dog Canelo and the son’s departure to England. The film is at once warm, painful, and disarmingly tender.
The Czech animated musical Stone of Destiny (dir. Julie Černá) takes us on a symbolic journey of an anthropomorphic stone that sings, wanders, and searches for freedom. The Irish film Florence (dir. Tess Doolan Burke), presented in its international premiere, deals with pregnancy, anxiety, and the invisible mechanisms of grief. The Polish film Void Spaces (dir. Marta Koch) uses a therapy session as a framework for an animated reconstruction of trauma, while two films from Serbia explore youth and loss: River (dir. Uglješa Ranisavljević) and August (dir. Dan Grabnar); both films will have their Croatian premiere.
The Korean fiction film Taxi, Jelly (dir. Joonyoung Kim) follows a former actor who becomes a taxi driver and tries to start a new life in his hometown, while the Lithuanian film Closeout (dir. Agnė Giršaitė) portrays a struggle between memory and forgetting in the house of a deceased grandfather.
The experimental Egyptian film From and to Nature, We Return (dir. Bishoy Adel) combines poetry and imagery into a visual meditation on the human bond with nature. The Belgian film Sphere Supreme (dir. Hasan Pastaci) uses mythological motifs and animation to question the protagonist’s identity, while the Austrian film Laute Stille (dir. Lisa Bayr) explores the loss of sensation through digital and mural imagery.
The Chinese documentary Voice of Chinese Taipei (dir. Zhao Keran) presents a portrait of a young blogger in mainland China trying to build an identity and career under the cultural burden of a divided Taiwan.
The Bosnian-Herzegovinian fiction film Good Luck, Sara! (dir. Isidora Ratković) is set on the protagonist’s last day in Sarajevo, portraying a quiet yet deeply felt farewell to everything familiar.
TNFF 2026
Submit a film
TNFF 2025
Grand Prix of the Tabor New Frame Film Festival awarded to the Portuguese-French film “The Hunters” by David Pinheiro Vicente
TNFF 2025
Final day of TNFF marked by the Melusine awards for the best films
TNFF 2025
Tabor New Frame Film Festival officially opened
PROGRAM
SCHEDULE
JURY
TEAM
TABOR
NEW FRAME FILM
After more than two decades of the cult Tabor Film Festival, a new chapter begins. Tabor New Frame Film Festival is an international celebration of short film, spotlighting bold filmmakers under the age of 35. Set in the spectacular surroundings of Veliki Tabor Castle, all film programs, workshops, and concerts are free of charge for all visitors.
PROGRAM
SCHEDULE
JURY
TEAM
TABOR
NEW FRAME FILM
After more than two decades of the cult Tabor Film Festival, a new chapter begins. Tabor New Frame Film Festival is an international celebration of short film, spotlighting bold filmmakers under the age of 35. Set in the spectacular surroundings of Veliki Tabor Castle, all film programs, workshops, and concerts are free of charge for all visitors.
2026
International Competition
2026
Croatian Competition
2026
Student Competition
Submissions for the Tabor New Frame Film Festival 2026 competition programs are now open.
MEET THE JURY
Lev Slivnik
Slovenia
Lev Slivnik is originally from Ljubljana and is currently based in Amsterdam, where he earned a Master’s degree in Preservation and Presentation of the Moving Image from the University of Amsterdam. He works in the field of film programming and curation, with a primary focus on film festivals. Lev currently serves as a Program Producer at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) and as a Pre-Selector for the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. He is also the co-organizer of Working Progress, a monthly work-in-progress screening series at Filmhuis Cavia in Amsterdam, which offers filmmakers the opportunity to receive audience feedback on their unfinished films. Previously, he was part of the pre-selection teams for Giornate degli Autori (Venice Days) and Lago Film Fest, and in 2023, he served on the Selection Panel for the LUX Audience Award.
Mário Macedo
Portugal
Mário Macedo (1989) was born and raised in a small town in the north of Portugal. His films have been selected for several festivals, such as Cannes Film Festival, Cairo IFF, Doclisboa IFF, Sarajevo Film Festival, Mostra São Paulo IFF, Clermont-Ferrand IFF and was awarded the Grand Prix and the European Film Academy Award at Curtas Vila do Conde 2024, the Best Director award at Curtas Vila do Conde 2021 and also got the National Grand Prix at FEST New Directors/New Films 2017. He published with Lebop (PT) and Editions Loco (FR), together with Olhar de Ulisses, his first photobook ‘Running Away Into You’, that premiered at Rencontre d'Arles in 2024.
Maruška Aras
Croatia
Maruška Aras is an actress born in 1996 in Zadar. She completed a five-year acting program at the Academy of Dramatic Art in Zagreb, where she currently lives. Maruška works as an external associate – assistant in the acting course at the Academy in the class of Borna Baletić. In addition, she occasionally leads drama workshops and film workshops for children and youth. Since graduating in 2019, she has performed in productions at the Croatian National Theatre in Varaždin, Split, and Zagreb, as well as at Teatar &TD, Teatro Verrdi, Eurokaz, Žar ptica, and others. Alongside productions in which she is engaged as an actress, she also collaborates with Teatro Verrdi on her own projects, developing her authorial expression. She played the lead role in the award-winning film Nun of Your Business directed by Ivana Kragić, and has taken on other roles in collaboration with various Croatian directors such as Tomislav Šoban, Nikica Zdunić, Vanja Juranić, Mate Ugrin, and others.
Abhishek Verma
India
Abhishek Verma is an animation filmmaker, screenwriter and design educator. He has been directing and producing independent animation films since 2014: Chasni – The Sugar Syrup (2014); Lukka Chuppi – Hide and Seek (2018); Manhole (2021), Into the Manhole VR experience (2024). His film Maacher Jhol (Fish Curry) from 2017, won the prestigious Indian National Film Award and the Annecy Award at the Annecy International Film Festival. He was honoured with an award at the Académie des César in 2019. His upcoming animation films are Kitchen - The World Within (a 2D animation short film) and a 2D animation feature film, Marita-Jeevita (Purity-Impurity), based on the notion of caste in India. He is presently a faculty member at the School of Design, IIT Bombay, India.
Sabina Krešić
Croatia
Sabina Krešić is a producer with many years of experience working in the cultural sector. Since 2016, she has been professionally engaged in film production as the lead producer at Fade In, a production company based in Zagreb. Her films have been screened and awarded at numerous renowned international festivals, including Sheffield Doc/Fest, DocLisboa, Trieste Film Festival, Sarajevo Film Festival, Tallinn Black Nights, True/False, Motovun Film Festival, DokuFest, FIPADOC, Liburnia Film Festival, and ZagrebDox. One of her most acclaimed recent projects is the documentary Factory to the Workers by Srđan Kovačević, considered one of the most awarded and critically praised Croatian documentaries in recent years. While she primarily collaborates with Croatian directors, she also works internationally, having co-produced with partners in Italy, Belgium, Slovenia, Spain, Serbia, Turkey, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Her main focus is on documentary films and series, although she has also produced a fiction feature film – Full Speed Ahead (Punim plućima, dir. Radislav Jovanov Gonzo), which won two Golden Arenas at the Pula Film Festival in 2022. In 2023, she launched her own production company, Rastika, and co-founded the Mezzanine Collective, a studio dedicated to film production and image post-production.
Mladen Stanić
Croatia
Mladen Stanić is a film director and screenwriter from Split, Croatia. He graduated from the Academy of Dramatic Art in Zagreb with a Master's degree in Film Directing. He is currently developing his debut feature-length project. His short films have won awards at domestic and international film festivals. The most famous among them are: A Small Detail (2017), White Room (2018), Ark (2024) etc.
