Dušan Vukotić

Who was Dušan Vukotić?

Dušan Vukotić was an award-winning cartoonist, author and director of animated films from Yugoslavia. He is the best known member of the Zagreb school of animated films.

Vukotić was born in Bileća, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In 1953 he was one of the founding members of Zagreb Film. He worked there for over four decades.

He won an Oscar for best animated short in 1961 for Surogat, being the first foreigner to do so. Another of his films, Igra, was nominated for an Academy Award in 1964.

After the 1960s, he rarely made short animated films, making three full-length movies - a fantasy tale for children, Sedmi kontinent, an action movie, Akcija Stadion about the resistance of Zagreb students to the Ustaša regime in 1941, and the science fiction/horror parody Gosti iz galaksije. In 1963, he was a member of the jury at the 3rd Moscow International Film Festival.

He also taught film directing at the Zagreb Academy for Dramatic Art from the founding of its Film department in 1967 until his retirement in the early 1990s.