Over the next week, 11 Croatian feature films and three co-productions will compete for awards.
The festival was opened by world famous producer Branko Lustig as an envoy of President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic.
Lustig, who won Oscars and Golden Globes for "Schindler's List" in 1993 and "Gladiator" in 2001, said the Pula Film Festival was indestructible, recalling its 1995 edition, during the Homeland War.
Culture Minister Berislav Sipus said Pula's arena was the most beautiful cinema in the world and that this year's festival programme was full of surprises. He said that over the past year Croatian cinema "reaped its best harvest in terms of the number of films, quality and awards it collected and is collecting around the world."
As part of the international programme, the festival will feature two world premieres, Serbian director Stevan Filipovic's "Pored mene" and Marie Clare's "Streetkids United II: The Girls from Rio", a British-Dutch-Brazilian co-production.