Zagreb School of Animated Films

The history of animation in Zagreb begins in 1922, with two short animated commercials done by Sergej Tagatz. The first production company "Škola narodnog zdravlja" (represented by director Milan Marjanović, artist Petar Papp) continued making animated shorts such as Macin Nos, Ivin Zub and Martin u nebo in the period 1928 - 1929. In the 30s, more animated commercials were produced by Maar-Reklama film company.

Following World War II, Walter Neugebauer created the animated film Svi na izbore in 1945, under heavy influence of Disney animation. This was followed by other satirical works such as the propaganda film Veliki miting, produced in 1951 by Jadran Film.

According to researcher Ronald Holloway, the two primary influences on the Zagreb School were Jiří Trnka's film The Gift (1947) and the American film The Four Poster, a live-action comedy-drama that features animation directed by John Hubley at United Productions of America (UPA). The Four Poster arrived Yugoslavia in "a batch of American feature films sent for possible sale to Yugoslavia", Holloway wrote, around the same time that director Dušan Vukotić read an article about UPA's style in Graphis at an English bookstore in Zagreb. Vukotić and others studied The Four Poster's animation, which also gave them a greater understanding of the still images in Graphis. As a result, the team began to explore design-focused limited animation at Zagreb Film. The animation of Zagreb made its first major breakthrough with the short Samac (1958) by Vatroslav Mimica, which won the Grand Prix at the Venice Film Festival. This was followed by the 1961 short Surogat by Dušan Vukotić, which won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film, the first non-American to do so. First animated shows began appearing during his time, such as Inspektor Maska (1962–1963), and the internationally renown Professor Balthazar (1967–1978) by Zlatko Grgić.

The group's strong reception in North America is evident from frequent screenings, major retrospectives at MoMA by the late 1970s, and the preservation of Zagreb Film prints in archives such as the Harvard Film Archive.

During the 80s and 90s, Croatia Film produced the country's first animated features, all directed by Milan Blažeković: The Elm-Chanted Forest, The Magician's Hat and Lapitch the Little Shoemaker.