ZELIMIR ZILNIK (1942), was first noticed by the end of sixties for his visually expressive and critical films, and recognized both in his home country Yugoslavia and internationally with the documentary "The Unemployed" - Grand Prix at Oberhausen Festival, 1968 and the feature "Early Works" - Grand Prix at Berlin Film Festival, 1969).

In the early seventies, Zilnik was heavily criticized on ideological grounds, since his films were part of the "Black Wave" movement." Early Works" & "Freedom or Cartoons" were censored and banned. The same happened to the documentary "June Turmoil" which dealt with student demonstrations.

Between 1973 and 1976, Zilnik worked for independent production companies in Germany. Dealing with anarcho-terrorism as a subject of his documentary "Offentliche Hinrichtung " and the feature "Das Paradies", Zilnik again experienced the mechanisms of censorship.

Back in Yugoslavia, for some time he worked on theater productions, (''Gastarbeiter Opera'') but since 1980 he has been formulating a specific language of docu-dramas, successfully presented on various television networks, and at local and international festivals ("The Injury and Recovery of Buda Brakus", awarded at Portorose Festival, 1981; "Brooklyn-Gusinje", awarded at Prix Europa, Stockholm 1988).

Several of his next projects were regarded as highly innovative and provocative: the feature " Pretty Women Walking Through the City" (1985) predicts that nationalistic tensions will lead to the disintegration of Yugoslavia and a cataclysm at the Balkans. The black comedy "The Way Steel Was Tempered" (1988), deals with the crash of the East-European model and the subsequent phenomenon of "wild capitalism".

In 1994, with "Tito's Second Time among the Serbs'', Zilnik also helped in initiating video and television production for the most radical and independent media in Yugoslavia at that time - B 92, in Belgrade. His feature from 1995, ''Marble Ass'' was an analysis of the myth built on masculinity and warrior mentality, a possible answer to the question what is left of the 'marble man' in the nineties. The film was awarded at the Berlin Film Festival, (1995) and afterwards attracted great attention around the world (Los Angeles, Sao Paolo, Chicago, Munich, Moscow).

Projects that follow /feature ''Wanderlust'' (1998), docu-drama "Fortress Europe" (2000), documentaries ‘'Kenedi Goes back Home'' (2003) and its sequel  "Kenedi, Lost and Found", and latest production "Europe Next Door" (2005)/ all portray the destinies of common people from Central and Eastern Europe, adding to the story of a system of values generated in disputable social systems, a narrative which runs through Zilnik's film career so far.