2024 · short fiction film (development and financing stage) · film project
Oproštaj is a character-driven short fiction film on grief, return, and emotional release in Vrbovec.
Oproštaj je kratki igrani film o povratku, tišini i opraštanju: unuk se vraća u Vrbovec djedu koji umire, a rastanak postaje čin, a ne riječi.
I want to be straight about where Oproštaj stands: it is packaged, not made. Augustin and I have been working together since 2017, and by September 2024 we had everything a short like this can have on paper - a bilingual director's book, a locked budget of 69.420,69 EUR, the HAVC production application in for the second 2024 deadline, the rights and director contracts signed, and the European Short Pitch application filed in Zagreb. What we do not yet have is a yes on the financing, and I would rather say that plainly than dress up submissions as results.
The part I am proudest of is the DOGMA 23 gallery idea - starting the conversation with an audience before the film exists, through the water tower, the script, and the Morse code, and trying to turn early interest into actual pre-sales. Whether this becomes a film in 2026 depends on decisions that are not mine to make. The groundwork is done and it is honest work; the rest is waiting.
- Matija Radeljak
Oproštaj (Farewell) is a ten-minute short fiction film built around a single exact gesture. Simon comes back to Vrbovec after years abroad to sit with a grandfather who is dying and can no longer speak. What passes between them is not a speech but a tactile Morse exchange and a key to the town water tower - farewell rendered as an action rather than a monologue. Writer-director Augustin Koprić keeps the film tied to a real town and a concrete object so the grief stays specific instead of drifting into the abstract.
By 2024 the project had crossed from script development into an organised financing and market phase. Aning Film assembled a full production package for the Croatian Audiovisual Centre's (HAVC) second 2024 call, filed on 12 September: a bilingual director's book dated in Vrbovec that August, the screenplay, a tax-clearance certificate, and a financing plan totalling 69.420,69 EUR. HAVC carried the largest requested line at 36.296,28 EUR, with the rest mapped across Grad Vrbovec, Grad Zagreb, Udruga Avis Rara Studio, Aning Film's own stake of 12.675,67 EUR, and direct pre-sales of exhibition rights.
The characteristic move here is to treat audience contact as infrastructure rather than an afterthought. Alongside the domestic application, the team entered the film into the European Short Pitch 2025 development and co-production track, signing the form in Zagreb on 19 September 2024. In parallel they designed the DOGMA 23 gallery concept: an exhibition built from the film's own world - water-tower imagery, script fragments, participatory Morse - meant to generate measurable interest and convert part of it into pre-sale value before a single frame is shot, with a direct pre-sale target of at least 12.000 EUR. It is the same logic as the film itself: build the concrete thing that carries the feeling.
The paperwork that could be finished was finished. Author-rights and director-services agreements were executed between Aning Film and Koprić on 12 September 2024, and a HAVC review form followed on 8 January 2025. What stays open is the part that is not in the producer's hands - the financing decisions themselves. The record documents the applications and the signed agreements, not an approval. Oproštaj therefore sits in an honest place: a fully packaged short with a Winter/Spring 2026 premiere target and a distribution runway toward 2027, waiting on the money rather than on the work. What it already proves is the service - turning a modest short into a fundable, market-ready object, and building the audience apparatus around it in advance.
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