Nenad Puhovski was born in Zagreb and has completed elementary and grammar school there. He was actively engaged in amateur filmmaking from the age of 12, receiving awards at amateur film festivals. He graduated in Sociology and Philosophy at the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb, as well as in Film and Television Directing at the Academy for Drama arts in Zagreb.
As a director, he is active in theater as well as in film and television. He directed a handful of productions in theater and some 150 shows on television including television dramas, feature films and documentaries. Puhovski also directed a large variety of music shows of different genres encompassing almost all forms of music – classical, pop, rock, chansons and jazz.
In film, he directs mostly documentary films covering social problems and films about fine arts. Many of his films have been screened worldwide, while his films about fine arts have been awarded the Gold medal and other highest honors at the festival of documentary and short films in Belgrade. In 1997, Puhovski founded FACTUM documentary film project, which soon became the largest and most influential independent documentary film production in Croatia. He has produced over 45 documentary films of authors of all generations, especially young ones.
According to the general opinion of the critics and public, the best Croatian documentary film of the last decade "The Boy who Rushed" as well as the most controversial documentary film of that period – "The Storm over Krajina" have been produced by Factum. As a producer, he received four awards for the best production at the Croatian National Film Festival. He began his academic career at the Academy for Drama Arts in Zagreb in 1979 as an assistant, while today he works as a full professor of Documentary Film and Television Directing. He has also taught in Argentina, Austria, Brazil, Cuba, Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Holland, India, Italia, Namibia, Singapore, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UK, Vietnam, USA and Zimbabwe.
He was a member of the Executive Board of the European Documentary Network – EDN.
In 2004, he founded ZagrebDox – unique international competitive documentary festival in the region. Today he works as its artistic director.
