A film festival dedicated to high school film and film made by youth (age group: 14 – 20 held, for the 18th year in a row, in Croatia in the city of four rivers named Karlovac. In addition to numerous great films made by youth (both in the official competition and in the side program), the festival also offers diverse workshops, roundtables, development platforms for youth filmmakers and certainly the best “theatre hall” in the world – namely, each festival night screening takes place at the different open air location at the river shore – there are four festival’s nights and four rivers, so each night is a completely different experience.

• Grand Prix
• Audience Award
• Yellow Flag Award (for promoting non-violence)
• Best Animated Film
• Best Documentary Film
• Best Fiction Film
• Best Actor
• Best Actress
• Best Directing
• Best Screenplay
• Best Cinematography
• Best Editing
• Special Mentions

Terms of participation

1. The 18th Four River Film Festival is organized by the Croatian Film Association and Cinema Club Karlovac.

2. The festival will be held in Karlovac, Croatia from 9th – 13th of September 2025. All film clubs, groups of authors, students, pupils and individuals ages 14 to 20 are welcome to participate.

3. Each club, group, student, pupil or individual can send unlimited number of films to the Festival within the following categories: fiction film, documentaries, animated films and free style films.

4. The submission is done online via FilmFreeway. Deadline for applications is June 1st, 2025.

5. In order to qualify for selection, submitted films have to be completed after January 1, 2023 and should not have been submitted previously to our festival. There is no limit in duration of submitted films.

6. Selection of the films will be done by the selection committee: Ana Đordić, PhD, Dinka Radonić and Boško Picula, PhD. After seeing all qualified works, they will decide which films will be shown in the competition program of the festival.

7. Croatian Film Association and Cinema Club Karlovac uphold the following rights with the cause of popularisation of film creation:
- right to store works at the film archives for protection and preservation
- right to transfer films to suitable video and electronic media for showing at film screenings when presenting Four River Film Festival
- right to publish the winning films in the following year as part of the Croatian Film Association's Film EDUcation program for elementary and high schools (website: https://filmskanastava.hfs.hr/en/home)

Overall Rating
Quality
Value
Communication
Hospitality
Networking
  • Great festival! I wasn't able to attend in person but they live streamed the event and my film won Best Animation and I got an award and gift bag in the mail along with social media posts. They had great communication and I'd love to visit if I'm able to travel next time!

    January 2025
  • Yaro Hussein

    it was an honor to us to be selected in this wonderful festival and the staff of the festival were very helpful and amazing many thanks to the team behind making this festival.

    September 2024
  • Awesome film festival, very yellow!

    September 2024
  • Amazing experience, thank you for everything!

    September 2023
  • Ružica Dodig

    Amazing and friendly experience. Professional organization, amazing locations, open-air screenings, modern cinema...
    If you have the luck to participate in this festival as a high school student, you are almost ready to enroll as a future filmmaker. Good luck to everyone and thank you Karlovac once again,

    September 2023