Branko Istvancic was born in Subotica. Graduated film and TV direction in 1999 at Academy of Dramatic Arts in Zagreb capital of Croatia. Making his first, documentary films on 8 mm camera at 15 with his first Hungarian film teacher Zoltan Siflis from Subotica, he has continuously been involved with documentary films and has received Croatian as well as international rewards for his work The Grand Prix at Croatian Short and Documentary Film Festival, Oktavijan and Zlatna Uljanica being among them.His student short fiction Saying Goodbye Rastanak was included in the New Direction programme of The First Film Foundation in London, a selection of six outstanding films by promising European directors. Deeply enrooted in the Croatian documentary tradition, he pays special attention to the humane, but also humoristic, treatment of his subjects. His successfully film, Wellman Bunarman 2003, continues this tradition, and elevates the simple story about a well digger to a level of the universal metaphor, but without the pretentious nature of many Croatian documentaries.The critics consider his film The Cormorant Scarecrow Plasitelj Kormorana 1998 to be one of the best Croatian documentaries of the nineties. His debut The Ghost in the Swamp with 60 thousand domestic visitors is placed second on the annual boxoffice report in 2006 and has been chosen to mark the comeback of featurelength films for children which have not been made by the Croatian film industry for the last twenty years. He is member of Croatian Film Directors Guild.

Address: HRT, Prisavlje 3, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia
Website: http://www.inet.hr/~bistvan/