Once the Yugoslavian festival of movie direction.
Herceg Novi, the city which had the first movie theater in 1919, where the „Lovcen Film“ from 1951-1955 had its best period, the city that gave well known film creators, pioneers of film, in this region, Anton Lukateli, Stevo Lepetic, Aleksandar Sekulovic, Simo Colovic, and even today in Hollywood popular cameraman Bojan Bazeli, since 1987 holds this festival of home cinematography and its founder is, also a Herceg Novi native, well known film worker Milan Zmukic. Festival is held in the first part of august on the unique scene of the summer stage of „Kanli Kula“. Film festival Herceg Novi - Montenegro Film festival is the most significant film festival in Montenegro. The international program is focused on the competitive selection of regional feature-length achievements (official competitive selection), documentaries and student films. Non competitive program Kino Evropa, contains recent achievements of established european authors.
Main goal of the festival is to promote the regional and the world cinematography especially opening the space for authors and movies that nourish an authentic artistic sensibility, brave approach to social reality, movie language and production, with accent on presenting an intersection of modern poetics and expressions.
The first Yugoslavian festival of movie direction was held in Herceg Novi from August 7-13 1987. First movie that was showed on the Kanli Kula fortress was „U ime naroda (In the name of the people)“ and the director Zivko Nikolic was awarded a silver mimosa for his direction. Since the 25th festival, the award of the foundation Zivko Nikolic is awarded for special approach to film expression, and then for the author of the best student film. First winner of the award was Zeljko Sosic for the movie „Mali ljubavni Bog (Little love God)“
