The oldest Motovun award, Fifty Years, was presented on Thursday 27 July to Bogdan Žižić, one of the greatest and most productive Croatian documentary filmmakers and one of the most awarded national filmmakers in general.

The award was presented to him by its last year's laureate, producer and documentary film director Nenad Puhovski, who shared with the audience his memories of his first encounter with both Žižić and a film set in general exactly fifty years ago.

''Motovun is not just a beautiful little hilltop town any more, it is also a venue of an important festival propagating freedom and connecting us with the world'', said Žižić when receiving the award before the packed audience in the main square.

Fifty Years Award is given to those who persist and endure in the cinematography that has never fondled its children, to those who manage to celebrate their golden jubilee in the conditions that require not just love and passsion for film, but also great strength of will. More than half a century long career of Bogdan Žižić is an example of a quest for the truth in a society where historical facts are so often twisted and discarded.

In his career Žižić directed a dozen feature-length fiction films, but he is best known by some one hundred documentary and short films he made. This doyen of documentary filmmaking has always been preoccupied with the topics like repression, morale of war victors and the dubious reliability of human memory. As regards memory, he made a film about the destruction of monuments to WWII partisans, Damnatio Memoriae, providing comprehensive evidence of this large-scale trend. His last film, Jasenovac Memento, marked Žižić's return to the subject of the Ustashi concentration camp, presenting the chronology of the attrocities committed there.

Fifty Years Award is given in cooperation with Croatian Film Directors Guild.