Zoran Tadić director

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Birth: 2. 9. 1941., Livno

Death: 9. 9. 2007., Zagreb

At first in the shadow of the more distinguished Lordan Zafranović and Rajko Grlić, Zoran Tadić developed into the most interesting and most esteemed Croatian author of the 1980s. He studied at the University of Philosophy in Zagreb and in the 1960s became a prominent member of the so-called followers of Hitchcock, a group of film critics that established the auteur theory and an inclination towards genre films in Croatia and Yugoslavia. Tadić himself is a great admirer of Ford, Hawks, Hitchcock and Lang, which is evident in his films. In 1970s, he was one of the leading documentarists in Yugoslavia, and usually dealt with socially critical topics about scanty life in the Dalmatian inlands (e.g. Druge, 1972; Pletenice, 1974; Dernek, 1975). He made his film-directing debut with the impressive thriller drama Ritam zločina (1981, based on the story by Pavao Pavličić), according to most critics the best Croatian film of all time. The rest of his feature film opus is similar to his debut - they belong to the so-called sub-genre of metaphysically suggestive and socially critical films. He directed two episodes of the popular TV series Nepokoreni grad (1981) about members of an illegal organization in occupied Zagreb during WW II; one of the episodes, Crna kožna torba, became a cult TV episode. In the mid 1980s he made a children’s TV series, Ne daj se, Floki!, which he later, in 2000, transformed into a feature film. He teaches film directing at the Academy of Drama Arts in Zagreb.