Lordan Zafranović is a Croatian film director, and a major figure of the Yugoslav Black Wave, as well as a former communist politician.
Education
After receiving a degree in literature and visual arts at the University of Split, Zafranović enrolled at the famous FAMU in Prague where he studied film directing and where he eventually graduated in 1981. He is therefore considered part of the so-called Prague School, a group of acclaimed Yugoslav directors of the 1960s/70s who all studied there (the others being Emir Kusturica, Goran Paskaljević and Rajko Grlić).
Career
His first films made in the early 1960s were mostly experimental shorts with grotesque and absurdist influences. His first notable efforts and films that marked the beginning of his regular feature filmmaking were Sunday (1969) and Passion According to Matthew (1975), the latter earning him the critics" award at the Pula Film Festival. Zafranović was elected to the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Croatia in 1989.
During the political turmoil in the early 1990s he moved to Prague and slowly sunk into obscurity.
During this period he made a documentary feature, (1994), produced by the Croatian State Television but never broadcast, and later rarely screened. In the Czechoslovakian Republic he made a feature film Revenge (1995).
In the 2000s, he returned to Croatia, but several of his films, which received state fund support, are still in pre-production.