Oscar, Golden Bear and Cannes winners come to Zadar as the 20th Festival of Tolerance unveils its film programme

Nineteen films, including winners of the Oscar, the Golden Bear and the Short Film Palme d’Or, alongside Tolerance Talks and free admission from 8 to 10 October.

The 20th Festival of Tolerance has announced its film programme ahead of this year’s edition, taking place from 8 to 10 October 2026 at the Rector’s Palace and Providur’s Palace in the heart of Zadar.

The line-up brings together nineteen fiction, documentary, animated and short films selected from Cannes, the Berlinale, Sundance, Venice and other leading festivals. Highlights include this year’s Oscar winner for Best Documentary Feature Film, the Berlinale’s Golden Bear winner and the recipient of the Short Film Palme d’Or, alongside a number of Sundance award winners. Admission to all events is free.

Curated by Snježana Tribuson, Boško Picula and Ivica Perinović, the programme moves across fiction, documentary, animation and short film. What connects these distinct cinematic voices is their closeness to the people on screen. History, war, propaganda, exile, belonging and family memory enter the frame through individual lives, relationships and choices. These are films that trust their audiences, and whose resonance extends beyond the closing credits.

Cannes at the opening and closing of the festival

The festival opens with Paweł Pawlikowski’s Fatherland, which follows Thomas Mann and his daughter Erika as they return to Germany in 1949 after sixteen years in exile. Their journey through a devastated, politically divided country becomes a family reckoning with guilt, loss and the meaning of home. Sandra Hüller and Hanns Zischler play Erika and Thomas Mann.

Closing the festival is La bola negra, directed by Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi. Adapted from Alberto Conejero’s play La Piedra Oscura, the film follows three men across three periods of a divided Spain, their lives connected by desire, suffering and the legacies they inherit. Lorca’s legacy runs throughout the film. The cast includes Guitarricadelafuente, Penélope Cruz and Glenn Close. Pawlikowski and the directing duo Calvo and Ambrossi shared the Best Director award at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival.

From the Oscars to the Golden Bear

David Borenstein and Pavel Talankin’s Mr. Nobody Against Putin, winner of the 2026 Oscar for Best Documentary Feature Film and a World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award at Sundance in 2025, draws on footage recorded in a Russian school as education is gradually turned into an instrument of war propaganda.

İlker Çatak’s Yellow Letters, winner of the Golden Bear at the 2026 Berlinale, follows an artist couple whose personal and professional lives unravel under state pressure and the loss of their jobs and home.

Sara Khaki and Mohammadreza Eyni’s Cutting Through Rocks, winner of the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Documentary at Sundance in 2025 and an Oscar nominee in 2026, follows Sara Shahverdi, the first woman elected to the council of her Iranian village, over eight years.

Eva Libertad’s Deaf (Sorda) immerses audiences in the experience of a deaf woman embarking on motherhood with her hearing partner. The film won the Panorama Audience Award and the CICAE Art Cinema Award at the 2025 Berlinale.

Through the story of a single mother working in Georgia’s surrogacy industry, 9-Month Contract asks how much choice remains when poverty and the need to care for a child determine the options available.

Home, borders and growing up

Itab Azzam and Jack MacInnes’s One in a Million, winner of the Audience Award and the Directing Award in the World Cinema Documentary competition at Sundance in 2026, follows a girl who has fled Syria over ten years as she grows up between the loss of home and the possibility of a new beginning.

Akio Fujimoto’s Lost Land follows two Rohingya children on a perilous journey from a refugee camp towards Malaysia. Its special screening and accompanying Tolerance Talk are presented in partnership with UNHCR.

Irene Iborra Rizo’s animated feature Olivia and the Invisible Earthquake places a child’s perspective at the heart of a story about the loss of home, family and security. The animated short The Night Boots completes the educational film programme for younger audiences.

History in the family and the archive

László Nemes’s Orphan, screened at the 2025 Venice Film Festival, is set in Budapest in 1957, where a young Jewish boy’s world is shaken by the arrival of a man who claims to be his real father.

Marisa Fox’s My Underground Mother begins with a secret in the filmmaker’s mother’s past, leading her towards women’s experiences of forced labour in Nazi Europe.

Tawfeek Barhom’s short I’m Glad You’re Dead Now, winner of the Short Film Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2025, brings two brothers back to the place where they grew up and into the darker reaches of their shared past.

We Were the Scenery, winner of the Short Film Jury Award: Nonfiction at Sundance in 2025, restores a voice to Vietnamese refugees who, having lived through a real war, found themselves cast as extras in Coppola’s Apocalypse Now.

The war after the war

Ceasefire follows Hazira, a survivor of Srebrenica who has spent almost three decades living in a refugee camp near Tuzla.

Drawing on thirteen years of personal archives, journalism and a love story, Birds of War brings together revolution, war and exile in Syria and Lebanon. The film received the World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Journalistic Impact at Sundance in 2026.

Pavo Marinković’s Croatian short The Cow examines war and appropriation through a sharply drawn moral parable.

Butcher’s Stain, nominated for the 2026 Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film, follows a Palestinian butcher working in an Israeli supermarket who is accused of an act he maintains he did not commit.

Film is not the last word

The festival opens on Thursday 8 October. At 18:45, cellist Petra Kušan welcomes audiences with a musical performance on the first floor of the Rector’s Palace. The opening ceremony and screening of Fatherland follow at 19:00 in the Polyvalent Hall of Providur’s Palace.

Alongside the screenings, the programme features three Tolerance Talks for general audiences, moderated by Izabela Laura, a round-table discussion and two Educational Mornings, each combining a film screening with a subsequent discussion. The festival has been developing its Tolerance Talks programme for more than a decade.

The Tolerance Talk ‘Until Everyone Is Safe’ takes place on Friday 9 October at 19:45, following the screening of Lost Land.

Speakers are Giulia Naboni, External Relations Officer at the UNHCR Representation for Central and Southeast Europe; Monika Čavlović, Human Rights Adviser at the Office of the Ombudswoman of Croatia; and Kateryna Chumachenko, a Ukrainian photographer with lived experience of forced displacement.

Saturday 10 October, the festival’s final day, offers a particularly full programme. At 11:00, the Bersa Brothers Concert Hall in the Rector’s Palace hosts the round-table discussion ‘The Vitality and Transformation of Arbanasi Heritage’, accompanied by the promotional film Zonja Jon – 300 Years of Togetherness. The discussion is moderated by Dr Ivana Kurtović Budja.

At the same time, Deaf (Sorda) screens in the Polyvalent Hall of Providur’s Palace. It is followed at 13:00 by the Tolerance Talk ‘Everyone Talks. Who Listens?’ (Powered by Novi radio). Croatian Sign Language interpretation will be provided.

The final Tolerance Talk, ‘We Don’t Talk About That in Our Family’, takes place on Saturday at 20:30. The discussion features Dr Ljiljana Dobrovšak, a historian whose research encompasses minority histories, Jewish history, the history of emigration and other areas of social and cultural history.

The closing ceremony and presentation of the Audience Award take place on Saturday at 21:00 in the Polyvalent Hall of Providur’s Palace, followed by La bola negra at 21:10.

Educational Mornings

The educational programme includes screenings and discussions for children, young people and teachers. Olivia and the Invisible Earthquake and The Night Boots open up conversations about home, security and children’s perspectives, while Mr. Nobody Against Putin provides a starting point for exploring propaganda, media literacy and civic responsibility.

The Educational Morning featuring Mr. Nobody Against Putin and the discussion ‘The Algorithm Doesn’t Hate. It Just Knows What Works.’ also promotes the European Union’s Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values (CERV) programme, with support from the Government of the Republic of Croatia Office for Cooperation with NGOs.

BLIZINA photography exhibition

The wider programme also includes BLIZINA, an exhibition of photographs by Kateryna Chumachenko presented as a digital display. A selection of her work will be shown on a large digital screen in the foyer of Providur’s Palace from 8 to 10 October, during festival events.

Organisers and partners

The 20th Festival of Tolerance is organised by the Association of the Festival of Contemporary Jewish Film Zagreb, with Zadar Concert Office as its principal partner and support from the City of Zadar, the Croatian Audiovisual Centre (HAVC), UNHCR, the Government of the Republic of Croatia Office for Cooperation with NGOs and other partners. Media coverage is supported by 24sata and Novi radio.

Partners and supporters were not involved in selecting the films. The views expressed in the films and discussions are those of their creators and participants. Partnership or financial support does not imply endorsement of any individual film, position or message.

The full schedule of screenings, discussions and educational events is available at www.festivaloftolerance.com and on the festival’s official Facebook and Instagram channels.

Admission to all events is free.

Media contact

Izabela Laura, +385 92 509 1610, izabela@izabelalaura.eu

Notes to editors

For press photographs, film stills and other high-resolution materials, please contact the media representative above. All published images must carry the relevant photographic credits.