Arsen A. Ostojic

Arsen was born in the city of Split, on the Croatian Adriatic coast, in 1965. He decided to become a film director at the early age of twelve after joining a cinema group in his elementary school. He made silent, short genre films in black and white on Normal 8 film stock, which he and his classmates invented the stories for, shot and acted, and also mixed the chemicals and developed the footage for. When he was fourteen, his Super 8 short film 'The Stone Mason' featuring his grandfather working in a stone mine on the island of Brac, just off the coast of Split, was aired on prime-time TV as the best short by a teenager.

During high school he was a member of the Kino-club Split and made mostly experimental films. From 1985 to 1990 he studied film directing at the Film and TV Directing department of the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Zagreb, Croatia, where he received his Bachelor of Arts degree with top honors. Some of his student short films received awards at professional film festivals. During his studies he also started working as an assistant director to well-known Croatian directors. He was fortunate to have his first job on the award-winning film "That Summer of White Roses" by Rajko Grlic with Tom Conti and Rod Steiger in leading roles.

From 1991 to 1994 he studied film directing and producing at the famous Graduate Film Department of the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, where he received his Master of Fine Arts degree, again with top honors, for his "superior academic record and exceptional creative ability". He attended lectures by Arthur Penn , Lorenzo Semple Jr. and Robert Nickson amongst others. He made several award-winning short films in New York and worked on numerous low budget films as an assistant director and production manager.

He continued writing screenplays but found it hard to raise the money to shoot them. In 2001 Arsen was developing a low-budget psychological thriller to be shot near Atlanta, Georgia when the attack on the Twin Towers in New York City brought all preparations to a halt. Several months later he left NYC and moved to Europe, where he taught filmmaking at the Polytechnic University in Salzburg, Austria for 2 years.

Back in Croatia he wrote and directed a successful full-length feature film A Wonderful Night in Split (2004) starring Coolio. Arsen was thrilled to have been able to make his first feature film about his hometown, which provided additional inspiration for him. The film garnered more than 20 awards and is often cited by critics as the best Croatian film since the country gained its independence. The film was nominated for the European Film Academy Discovery-Fassbinder Award as best first or second film in Europe in 2004. It was also an official submission for the Best Foreign Film Oscar® at the 2006 Academy Awards, proving to be a very serious contender.

In 2006 he co-wrote and directed the successful stage play 'Billie Holliday' (about an hour and a half in the life of the famous blues singer right before her come-back performance at Carnegie Hall) for the Croatian National Theater in Split. The play remained on the CNT's program for years and is still performed today, most recently in Italy, with the original production's Ksenija Prohaska reprising the title role.

In 2008 he completed his second feature film Niciji sin (2008) which was the absolute winner of the Croatian National Film Festival in Pula, winning, amongst others, the awards for Best Film and Best Director, as well as the Critics' Award. The film was selected as one of the best European films of 2009 and earned Arsen a 2nd official Oscar® submission in 2009, as well as a total of 16 further awards and accolades.

He was president of the Croatian Film Directors' Guild for 2 years between 2008 and 2010.

In 2012 he directed and produced his third feature film Le Chemin de Halima (2012) which broke the record-high audience vote at the Croatian National Film Festival in Pula. The film earned more than 30 awards worldwide, becoming the most awarded Croatian film in several decades and was again the Croatian official submission at the 2013 Academy Awards - Arsen's third official film submission in a row.

Influential website Deadline Hollywood included Le Chemin de Halima (2012) on a list of 15 films in the running for the Foreign Language Oscar® which had the biggest buzz about them and were considered favorites at the 86th Annual Academy Awards, amongst a then record-number of 76 entries.

In 2015 Arsen was working on what would have been his fourth feature film The Man in the Box (his first film in English) starring Kiefer Sutherland, when shooting encountered financial difficulties and the film continues to be postponed but scheduled to resume.

In 2018 he completed a fourth feature film F20 (2018). It had to be independently financed after the Croatian national film fund rejected several funding applications despite Arsen's proven multi-award-winning form. By 2021 the film had earned almost 30 awards at international film festivals, thereby repeating his previous success of the most awarded of Croatian films.

He's been a member of the European Film Academy since 2005. He is also a professor of film production at the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Zagreb, Croatia.