Selected
Projects
Hi, I’m Ivan Grgur, a writer-director interested in the absurd ways new technologies reshape real people’s lives. I like making films and series with strong and playful concepts.
Asparagus Bear
The residents of a quiet Mediterranean town are thrown into speculation overdrive with the unusual appearance of a bear in the midst of asparagus season.
Festivals
- • Toronto International Film Festival 2025
- • IDFA 2025
- • SXSW London
Don't Forget to Leave a Review
A documentary series about mass tourism, narrated by online reviews. It's like How To with John Wilson, if John Wilson was replaced by 10,000 angry tourists with Wi-Fi. Aired in primetime on Croatian national television.
Looking for collaborators to help expand the concept beyond Croatia into new destinations.
Men on Island
In the age of AI, algorithms and optimized everything, two boys wander through a remote Mediterranean island and meet men doing things no technology would ever come up with.
Sebastijan is trying to raise a giant cross on the island's highest hill. Vedran is building replicas of Egyptian pyramids in his olive grove. Bile is selling a van that is worthless to anybody but him. Rino is emotionally attached to a boat that may never be repaired.
Film about two boys discovering masculinity in a world that resists optimization.
Hotel Amfora
At a crossroads in his own life, a hotel bellboy becomes our guide through a Mediterranean town where everything depends on tourism, and almost nothing works because of it.
Between demanding guests, exhausted workers, local hustlers and collapsing social rules, the series follows the backstage of paradise.
Like "Atlanta", but in a small Mediterranean town with an ambitious bellboy instead of a rapper.
Men in Gyms
How online self-improvement-gym culture turns health advice into toxic masculinity.
Film starts with a simple question: what is the best advice for a healthy life? ...and slowly descends into the bizzare male ecosystem of gym tips, body tracking, looksmaxing, broscience and testosterone talk.
Built as a chain reaction of advice, the film moves from harmless routines to the darker online logic now sold to young men as self-improvement.
A chain reaction of advice that turns healthy living into toxic masculinity.
Daddy Is Coming Back
A hybrid documentary series about the memeification of politics.
After prison, former Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader became the star of a meme page Daddy Is Coming Back and somehow turned almost lovable.
Starting from this Croatian case, the series explores a global political shift: a world where the best candidate is not the one with the best plan, but the one who can win as a meme.
Driven by animated memes, the series shows how internet jokes transform into modern political power.
ABOUT ME
- • Born on the day The Beach Boys' Kokomo topped the Billboard charts.
- • Studied communication and journalism in Venice, Trieste and Lisbon.
- • Worked as a copywriter for 10 years.
- • Graduated in Film and TV Directing from the Academy of Dramatic Art in Zagreb in 2023.
- • Directed my first professional short documentary in 2025, Asparagus Bear, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and had its European premiere at IDFA.
- • Created and directed the television documentary series Don't Forget to Leave a Review.
- • I hate coriander and melon.
- • Love books and football.
