Youth and craziness, laughter and tears, love and pain perfectly complement each other in Babyteeth, debut film by Australian director Shannon Murphy, which will be shown in this year’s main program. On the other hand, it’s been a while since the film world has seen a stranger Romeo and Juliet from Milla and Moses. She is a straight A student who plays the violin and has cancer, and he’s a somewhat older small time drug dealer with a tattooed face and mullet. The avalanche of their love is unstoppable, and standing in its way are Milla’s parents who are horrified by Moses. Immediately after it premiered at the competition program of the Venice Film Festival, where it was one of the two films by women directors, Babyteeth gained the status of an indie favorite which will be adored by the younger audience, while those more experienced will admire the light, but also deeply touching story. After the success in Venice, numerous opportunities opened for Shannon Murphy, so several episodes of HBO’s award-winning series Killing Eve will be directed by her. And the fantastic Australian actors from Babyteeth are also familiar faces: we saw Eliza Scanlen who plays Milla in HBO’s show Sharp Objects, and Ben Mendelsohn, who plays Milla’s father, in the series Bloodline.

Fans of the popular British series following the family of Birmingham gangster from the beginning of the 20th century, Peaky Blinders, could recognize the name of Tim Mielants, director of the dark humor drama De Patrick, which is featured in ZFF’s competition program. De Patrick is a film about eccentric people, small pleasures and important tools, and the title hero lives in his father’s nudist camp where he’s in charge of repairs. The loss of his favorite hammer brings disorder in his well organized life and sets off a chain of events which will show that the residents of the camp still have a lot to discover. The film was awarded the Best Director award in Karlovy Vary (Tim Mielants), and one of the roles is played by New Zealand actor Jemaine Clement whom we saw at ZFF in beloved comedies by Taika Waititi Eagle vs Shark, What We Do in the Shadows, and on TV screens in the Grammy-winning series Flight of the Conchords.

The Italian mobster, former member of the Sicilian mafia Tommaso Buscetta is considered one of the first mobsters to become a police informant and pentito. The breaking of omerta, and therefore the betrayal of the mafia in Buscetta’s case was extremely hard since it was the first time that details of the inner structure and hierarchy of the Sicilian organization were revealed. Buscetta was an active member of the Mafia from 1945 in Italy, the US and Brazil until he was arrested in Italy and became a witness in the so-called Maxi trial, the biggest Mafia trial in history. After the murder of two judges, Buscetta continued to testify before the anti-Mafia commitee about the Mafia’s political connections. He later entered the witness protection program in the US, where he stayed until his death in 2000 in Florida. Modern pop-culture almost forgot about Buscetta until this year the so-called pentito got his 15 minutes of fame on TV and the big screen. Netflix is showing the documentary film Our Godfather, and ZFF’s program the Great 5 will feature the lavish feature version of his live The Traitor directed by veteran and winner of the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement Marco Bellocchio.