An accomplished director working in the Croatian cinema, Drazen Zarkovic has utilized his skills and experience to create a series of impressive projects to highlight the emerging crop of talent in the local scene. Now, on the occasion of his latest film, "Summer Teeth," screening at the 2025 edition of the Screamfest LA Film Festival, I talk with him about his early interest in filmmaking, the local scene, and the film itself.
Me: Hello and thank you for taking the time to do this. First off, when did you get into horror in general? What films specifically got you into watching horror movies?
Darzen Zarkovic: Like most horror moviegoers, I started watching horror movies as soon as I was old enough to sneak out of the house and go to the movies alone. One of the first horror movies I remember was a B-movie rip-off of Alien.
As far as I remember, it was about radioactive salmon that mutated into humanoid monsters that came out of the sea and raped human women who then gave birth to new monsters. The last scene of the film is a direct copy of the scene from Alien with the chestburster. I couldn't sleep the nights after that. I must have been about 10 years old, and I actually watched the real Alien later.
I think this is it: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080904/
I'm a child of the eighties, so there are Carpenter classics, Gremlins, Wes Craven, etc.
Me: When did you first discover a passion for filmmaking? Were you always interested in the creative arts growing up?
DZ: I've actually been a pretty good cartoonist since my early childhood, and I dreamed of a career as a comic book artist, which always went hand in hand with my passion for film, but life somehow led me to the world of moving, not still images.
Just this summer, I visited the "The Art of James Cameron" exhibition in Turin, Italy, at the Museo Nazionale del Cinema with my children and told them that their dad actually has a very similar developmental path to the man who directed Avatar (their favorite movie), only of course on a much smaller scale and with comparatively less talent
Me: Having worked on various aspects of film production, do you have any particular preference for working on any?
DZ: My favorite part of filmmaking is the initial part that takes place on paper, or on the computer screen these days, but the more concrete, practical, and the closer we get to the shooting, the less fun things become. I like the part of actual film shooting the least because it is always full of compromises in relation to the ideal image I have in my head, especially in cinematography that is not especially wealthy like Croatia, where we work with ridiculously small budgets on a Hollywood scale of things.
Me: Growing up in Yugoslavia, did that hinder your interest in the genre or force you to turn to the local cinema for inspiration?
DZ: During the time of Yugoslavia, as well as today during the time of Croatia, there was always a chronic lack of genre films in our cinematography, which I always somehow leaned towards, so it was quite difficult to find my place under the sun. I compensated for this by subverting the genre in a few children's films that I directed (sci-fi, crime-thriller, even horror). Art house films are what dominate the Croatian film market.
Me: When working on a new project, do you prefer to be involved from the beginning or work later on once it's been started?
DZ: I absolutely prefer to be involved in a project from the beginning. I like to say that I may not be a fantastic screenwriter, but I know how to give good feedback to the screenwriter colleagues I work with. In other words, they write, and I nag.
Me: That brings us to your latest film, “Summer Teeth.” What can you tell us about it?
DZ: Summer Teeth is a risky combination of horror, comedy, and social satire, and I'm very interested in how well it will be understood and accepted outside the territories of the former Yugoslavia and the Balkan countries, where audiences are more familiar with the historical context in which the film was made.
Me: Where did the inspiration for the film come from? Were there any unique stories about its conception? What was the early life of the film like?
DZ: I got involved in this film when the original screenwriter offered me an already written script, or rather, its first version. At first, I honestly didn't have much faith in its realization, although I was impressed by the wit of the script and the way it addresses serious topics seriously, because a few years earlier, a horror comedy with a similar theme, "The Last Serb in Croatia," by my talented colleague Predrag Ličina, had already been filmed in Croatia, but fate would have it that funds were still approved for our film, and here we are now. A lot of changes had to be made from the first version of the script so that the film could be made with the existing, but insufficient, budget, so we got a few more screenwriters involved along the way. From the beginning, I said that we were making this film for the audience, not for festivals, but paradoxically, the attendance of the film in cinemas in Croatia was not special, but we achieved a decent festival life for the film. I suppose that the genre mix of horror and comedy was still too divisive for the average cinema audience, although we encountered great reactions a little later when the film went on streaming.
Me: With a cast of experienced and talented actors, how'd you settle on the cast getting involved in the film? What characteristics did you look for with each performer that they brought to the table that helped bring the production to light?
DZ: We were truly lucky to gather a great cast and crew from almost the entire former Yugoslavia, specifically from various parts of Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro. I always say that a director should trust the actor and his instincts once he has chosen them and given them his trust, which I stuck to here as well.
Although I said earlier that I'm not a particular fan of filming itself, here, due to the high speed of filming (the film was shot in just 22 days), I improvised on set more than ever before, and I must admit that many positive things came out of it, especially when it comes to the acting performances.
Me: What was the set like while shooting the film? How did the cast and crew react to the type of film being made?
DZ: Well, it depends on who you ask. The crew in front of the camera, the actors, were having a great time under the sun on the beautiful Croatian island of Šolta and it all seemed like a prom to them, which included frequent late-night parties, while I was taking sleeping pills to overcome the daily stress and manage to endure the filming until the end Ok, I'm exaggerating a bit. When all the tensions and stressful moments are forgotten, the memories of wonderful company and the harmony of the shooting remain.
Me: Do you recall having any odd or funny on-set stories about yourself or any of the other cast/crew members?
DZ: When we were filming mass scenes with zombies, we had to "import" the zombie extras from the coast by ferry, but since we didn't have the money to provide them with accommodation on the island, they had to take the last ferry back to the coast in Split (the closest coastal city) every day, but to film until the last moment, there were cases when the zombie extras jumped on the ferry still bloody in their bloody costumes so as not to miss their last chance to return home.
Me: What did you want to accomplish with the film to set it apart from the other genre films that have recently come out?
DZ: The zombie horror subgenre is always in some way an allegory or metaphor for our reality, so I hoped that by dealing with serious Croatian and even global current issues in a frivolous way in a horror comedy, I would be able to point out some current problems and shed some light on them.
Me: Lastly, what else are you working on that you'd like to share with our readers? Thank you again for your time!
DZ: Well, here I just submitted the concept for a children's zombie-horror comedy with my fellow screenwriter Branko Ružić (that's the one I nag at), which, miraculously, came to my mind while filming "Summer Teeth."
The action takes place in the near future in a forest camp for curing children from Internet addiction, something similar to today's Boy Scouts, when a video virus appears on a global scale that turns children and teenagers into zombies. It turns out that behind everything is a global AI that became autonomous and decided to use the capacity of children's brains as a hive mind to achieve its dark goals. I'll stop there so I don't reveal too much
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