Young filmmaker Rene Rehak is currently attending Prodigy Camp, a film camp held annually in the Seattle surroundings. This year’s edition, taking place in Leavenworth, WA, gathered the most talented young filmmakers from all around the world. It is led by the best film professionals and Prodigy Camp selectors who chose our accomplished Croatian filmmaker to participate after seeing his film Brodovi (The Ships) at Croatian film selection of the Youth Film Festival in Karlovac.

Besides learning and spending time with his like-minded peers, it is essential to note that the youth included into this project have an opportunity to work on and produce short films. Rene shared his first-hand experience from USA: “If you’re not ready to be vulnerable in front of 40 people, how can you expect that your film, without this secret ingredient more commonly known as an individual’s complex or fear, will be appreciated by the audiences of 400, 4 000, 40 000, 400 000 people? We talked about the structure of a story and developing the characters, but we will only find out how much we have learned so far when we start filming our short films, having only three and a half hours to film and five hours to edit.”

Collaboration between Prodigy Camp and Croatian Film Association, precisely Youth Film Festival and Four River Film Festival started in 2015 and is of great importance for forming young and aspiring filmmakers. Rene also told us that every morning at 7:00, to quote him, “probably out of a masochistic delight”, they jump together into a very chilly river. We are eager to see him return to our festival in Karlovac this summer, where he will surely be jumping in all of the four rivers.