He studied at an acting school in Zagreb and afterwards studied at the University of Philosophy. In 1943, with his colleagues from the Croatian National Theatre, he joined the Partisans. During that time, he founded the Central Theater Company and wrote the only partisan theatre play, Pobjeda nije mramor. Following the war, he was the art director at Jadran Film, and afterwards studied film directing in Prague. In the mid-1950s, he became the first director of Zagreb Film. He directed more than twenty documentaries, such as Plitvička jezera (1956), which won an award in Berlin, and Turnir kandidata (1959), as well as the feature documentary film Zagreb za slobodu (1987). He is the author of three feature-length films, of which the most famous is Pustolov pred vratima (Adventure at the Door, 1961, based on the novel by Milan Begović), which was one of the first Croatian and Yugoslav films of psychological orientation. He finished his career with two documentaries - Mimara (1991) and Zvonici Like (The Bell-Towers of Lika, 1992).