Croatia's icons

Zagreb’s credibility as a city of outdoor artistic expression has increased dramatically over the last several years, in part thanks to a group of young, loosely affiliated artists called MUU (Museum of Street Art) and their scattered collections of murals around the capital. The most prolific of these artists is OKO (“The Eye”). Her phantasmagorical images of humans with birds’ faces, or dreamy patterns woven from what look like entrails, are decorative and disturbing in equal measure. “The bird-faces are a symbol of freedom, of something pure,” says OKO. “I read somewhere that birds are carriers of the soul after death, and I was really inspired by that idea.” Stuck to surfaces throughout the city, OKO’s pictures look like prints or photocopies; they are in fact painted on thin paper with acrylics before being glued to the wall of her choice. Her trademark larger-than-life human figures with animal heads can be seen at Zagreb’s Museum of Contemporary Art, decorating the courtyard of Medika club and at the outdoor wall of the &TD theatre bar.

Formed in Rijeka in 2011, Jonathan is a group of five friends who have riffed their way to Zagreb’s rock’n’roll sovereignty. Their swaggering indie sound was picked up by high profile Brit rockers Editors, who invited the band to support their tour last year. And it’s obvious why. Jonathan– who sing absolutely naturally in English – playfully explore the modern post-punk aesthetic, alternating between relatable indie ballads and music made for frenzied moshpits. According to the band, their name represents unity, with Jonathan being a metaphorical single person with a blend of character traits and whimsies from each member. They say they’re on a mission to tear down geographic and linguistic borders, and following their debut album in 2015 which earned them plenty of new fans, and big shows at INmusic and Exit Festival, Jonathan will be heard way beyond Zagreb very soon.

If an unorthodox literary tour of the Dalmatian coast is what you’re after there are few better guides than Olja Savičević Ivančević, who burst onto the authorial stage with her short story collection Nasmijati psa/To Make the Dog Laugh in 2006. Following a cast of oddball characters around Split and its surroundings, the book has the simultaneously abrasive, sarcastic and warmly human character that the port city is famous for. Adriatic themes are revisited in Savičević Ivančević’s first novel Adio kauboju/Farewell, Cowboy, in which a young woman returns to a small-town Dalmatia that is rather different to the one we see in the tourist brochures – here the economy is in collapse, locals are increasingly turning in on themselves, and the tourist season only provides a month or two of unconvincing release. The fact that a Western adventure is being filmed nearby gives the book its title and adds to the mood, redolent of transient glamour and unrealized small-town dreams. Last year the novel was finally made available in English thanks to London-based publisher Istros Books. It’s one of the rare examples of a contemporary Adriatic novel making it into English, and is well worth packing into your suitcase before you go.

One of Croatia’s most productive film directors, Dalibor has left his mark on the last decade more than any other. He is nothing if not versatile, moving from comedy through historical biopics to hard-edged social drama. His feature Fine Dead Girls (2002) was in many ways an epoch-defining film, dealing with lesbianism, violence and homophobia at a time when such issues rarely made an appearance at the local cinema (ten years on, Croatia is a decidedly more open society). A Hundred Minutes of Fame (2004) is arguably Matanić’s most poetic piece of work, dealing with the career of deaf watercolourist Slava Raškaj in appropriately painterly style. Matanić’s recent films have mined a rich seam of rural grotesque, with two films set in the wild, unspoilt Lika region: Kino Lika (2008) and Daddy (2011) Matanić’s latest film The High Sun (2015) follows the psychic wounds left behind by war in two neighbouring Croatian and Serbian villages. It won the sought-after Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes: the accolade is even more befitting as it’s also the first Croatian film to be screened at the festival since the country’s independence.