Vanja Kaludjercic #EDP2018

PODCAST| Matt Micucci interviews the festival programmer Vanja Kaludjercic at the 2018 East Doc Platform in Prague.

Vanja Kaludjercic, current festival programmer at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, attended the 2018 East Doc Platform in Prague, where she hosted an open lecture simply titled “The Perfect Premiere.” We met her at the Cervantes Institute to talk about her role as festival programmer and previous work as a project market manager. Her lecture entailed highlighting issues that are left unsaid about where a new film should premiere, and in this interview she outlines the many things filmmakers should consider when making this decision. We also discuss the role of festival in the preservation of a traditional type of cinephilia and more.

Vanja Kaludjercic, a festival programmer and project market manager, started out working at the Motovun Film Festival in Croatia and the Slovenian Cinematheque before organizing several festivals and festival sections in Zagreb like the Human Rights Film Festival, the ZagrebDox Pro workshop, and Animafest Zagreb. After moving to Paris, she was in charge of acquisitions at Coproduction Office from 2008 to 2010. She managed Paris Project for two years behind the Paris Cinema International Film Festival, while from 2012 till 2015 she was part of Les Arcs European Film Festival as Head of Industry. In 2014, with Les Arcs FF team she has established a new project market in the French capital called Paris Coproduction Village. From 2013 to 2015, Vanja worked for HAF – Film and Financing Market in Hong Kong as a matchmaking consultant. She was part of CPH: DOX festival for two years (2014/15), as programming and industry consultant, and subsequently as head of studies for the production workshop CPH: LAB. In 2014 she joined Slovenia-based distribution company Demiurg as head of acquisitions. For the 2016 edition of Cinéma du réel in Paris she was a member of selection committee and head of ParisDOC. Vanja has been programming for Sarajevo Film Festival for the past 9 years, for which she currently works as a short film programmer. In February 2016, Vanja was appointed as Head of Holland Film Meeting, a project market of Netherlands Film Festival.