Iva Babić

Iva Babić graduated from the Zagreb Academy of Dramatic Art with impeccable technical training and a gaze that makes the camera uneasy. In 2005, she began landing small roles on Croatian television without making much noise. Those were years of quiet learning, when she learned to handle the downtime on film sets.

That beginning was anything but glamorous.

But that initial lack of artifice defined her later style. Before filming, she reads the script looking for the cracks in the character, because she isn't interested in aesthetic perfection. So she specialized in women who keep secrets or who simply don't need the viewer's approval to exist on screen.

The Harshness of the Balkans

In 2015, she joined the cast of Zvizdan, a film that dissects interethnic hatred across three different decades. Director Dalibor Matanić trusted her to give body to a narrative in which silence weighed more than dialogue. The film won the Jury Prize in Un Certain Regard at Cannes and put Babić's name on the radar of the European industry.

But she chose to stay in her natural surroundings.

She continued working on local productions such as Goran in 2016, a icy thriller where the tension is thick enough to cut with a knife. In that project, she showed she can hold a close-up without blinking. For Babić, acting isn't about gesturing but about being present in an almost physical way.

From dry drama to zombie satire

The comedy came together with Predrag Ličina in 2019 with Posljednji Srbin u Hrvatskoj. She plays an action heroine in a dystopian future where Serbs are immune to a zombie virus. It was a risky bet that broke with the sobriety of her earlier work. So audiences discovered she also handled the rhythm of absurdity with surgical precision.

In 2022, she took part in Sigurno mjesto, an autobiographical story by Juraj Lerotić about suicide and family desolation. The film won three awards at the Locarno Film Festival. Babić brought a necessary restraint to a story that teetered on the emotional abyss in every scene.

And the gamble paid off.

In 2023, she shot Samo kad se smijem under the direction of Vanja Juranić. The plot tackles domestic violence and the Croatian justice system with a painful coldness. Babić avoided easy victimhood to build a character with uncomfortable edges who shies away from simple solutions.

During 2024, she worked on the series Frka, a production that explores power dynamics in urban settings. Shooting was completed in six weeks on a tight budget, which forced most scenes to be filmed in natural interiors in Zagreb.