The Zadar Tourist Board Destination Film Won Another Award

This great acknowledgement to the City of Zadar Tourist Board and director Goić came after the awarded first prize for best Croatian film in the category “Tourist Destination – City” at the recent International Zagreb Tourist Film Festival.

These two valuable prizes were tail wind to the young and talented Goić who could not conceal his satisfaction.

- When we started this project we only had an idea and a bunch of people that believed in it but it never crossed my mind that today I would stand on a Portuguese stage and receive such an important prize! If it had not been for Mario Paleka, the Zadar City Tourist Board director, I think that personally I would never have applied. We artists are probably made that way, we always need someone from the outside to acknowledge us and push us into the right direction – Goić smiled and pointed out that this festival was a perfect experience that would surely help him in his future work.

Having been awarded the prize, Zadar City Tourist Board director Mario Paleka pointed out that being in the finals was an exceptional honor and being awarded first prize at a prestigious international festival was of great significance to the city of Zadar. 

- This has created an excellent possibility of promoting the city and its surroundings at various foreign markets. Likewise, this award has shown how we believe in our people and that we are a support to local artists such as Goić.  We thus proved that as a city we do have something to show, we can show it and must invest in our people who can adequately and qualitatively present us in various domains, at various international festivals. They only need to be given a chance – Paleka concluded.

This Portuguese festival is one of a total of eleven festivals of CIFFT (International Association of Tourist Film Festivals) members whose organization organizes competitions for the best tourist films in the world.

The award ceremony, which took place on Friday evening in a modern theater in the city of Ourém, near Fatima, gathered filmmakers and tourism experts, professionals of this field, one of the most lucrative economic branches as well as and lovers of attractive destinations.

Among the ranks of the international jury, which included renowned people from tourism and production, there was a woman from Croatia. It was an experienced film producer, director of Zagreb TourFilm Festival, Spomenka Saragi, who commended the Zadar work. 

- The film is excellent, which was shown at my festival! It is really great to receive an invitation from the organizer in Portugal, as well as being in the finals. Believe me, it is really good to be among awarded films of this caliber!  That is why being awarded the first place in the thematic category "Culture and Heritage" is very significant, both for the director and for the city itself - pointed out Saraga, who added that Croatia had a large number of quality films at this festival and it did extremely well. 

- Our films won four awards showing that as a small country we have taken the right direction. I am happy for the young hopes and new energy the destinations will show in a different, innovative and interesting light – she concluded.