With the discovery of the Lumière brothers' Cinématographe at the end of the 19th century, the history of film as a medium will mark the coming 20th century. The film, or 'moving images', as it was then called, gained its popularity at a rapid pace and set out to conquer the world. In the early years, the production of the Lumière brothers' Cinématographe spike, making live images available to the audience around the world. Croatia got acquainted with cinema half a year after the official first presentation of Cinématographe in Paris, and shortly after that Zagreb got its first cinema hall. Although Croatia followed the world trends in terms of movie theaters, the beginnings of the film production in Croatia were quite late, primarily due to the high cost of film production. Precisely these high costs of film production was the reason why film as a medium was developed relatively slowly in the world. The first films was undoubtedly documentary films, primarily because the filmmakers recorded everyday life with the eye of a camera. As such, documentaries became the foundation for the development of film style, while film style became the foundation for the development of feature films. The film style is responsible for creating the ‘fundamental story’ that has become the foundation of all classic feature films to this day, only in modernist, and especially in postmodernist movies the ‘fundamental story’ is broken and authors start to experimented with different styles. But despite new trends, the 'fundamental story' has remained the 'formula' according to which feature films are made to this day, which is why audience remain fascinated by this 'live image' for a century later. ‘Fundamental Story’ is a generator that emotionally permeates the audience, leading them to empathically experience the movie. As the first films were based literally on the 'living image', that is they were shown without sound, and therefore they were called 'silent films', so with the introduction of sound film gained another dimension that drew the viewer into the film with almost all the senses. Although there was some resistance among filmmakers due to the introduction of sound into film, sound soon became the film standard, but at the same time, crucial to the careers of the first silent film actors like Charlie Chaplin, who despite his great popularity failed to 'survive' sound. his career ended with the arrival of sound film, but on the other hand sound film stimulated the development of film style, and the performances. Gags and overemphasized movements of the actors in the film were no longer needed, because the sound complemented the shortcomings of 'silent films', and the film was able to continue its day journey. With the onset of World War II, film began to turn from a means of entertainment more and more as a medium of ideological and political propaganda. Although we can see the first beginnings of film as a propaganda medium in the World War l, World War II was crucial for the propaganda role of the film, the film was quickly recognized in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, as well as in the Soviet Union - USSR, and the film became one of the powerful ‘weapons’ with which the media war was waged in parallel with the war waged on the battlefield. The propaganda role of film as a medium has encouraged, primarily in European countries to put film under a kind of control through systems of state funding of films that will become today one of the main models of European film production. Both in Europe and in Croatia, film is increasingly becoming a state-run medium, both during the ' Independent state of Croatia' - NDH when the first Croatian sound film was made, and later in Yugoslavia, which launched the systematic production of films according to the Soviet-centralist model. Yugoslav film is experiencing a boom that will culminate unexpectedly in the animated film that founded the 'Zagreb School of Cartoon Film' in Croatia, which is finally proving its success by winning the first and so far only Oscar in Croatian film history. With the disintegration of Yugoslavia and the outbreak of the Homeland War in Croatia, the film once again confirmed its importance in the media war that was fought in parallel with the war on the battlefield. The propaganda film became the basis of modern Croatian cinematography at the very end of the 20th century. Today, Croatian cinematography has largely been deprived of the tradition of Yugoslav film and has embarked on the path of finding its authenticity, and that path continues to this day.