Reception
Prior to the film's premiere at the 2006 Pula Film Festival, the expectations were very high. Libertas was well received by the festival audience, with an average score of 4.41/5, ranking 3rd out of 8 films, but the critics rated it second-to-last at 2.55. The film won two minor awards at the festival, Golden Arena for Best Costume Design and Golden Arena for Best Make-up.
The reviews were generally unfavorable. Variety described Libertas as an "old-fashioned European costume drama" which is "grandly produced and blandly staged". A Nacional review found faults with rigid directing and lack of character depth. The critics disliked the poor dubbing, the "unconvincing" and "forced" romance subplot, and mixing of the 16th-century Ragusan dialect with modern Croatian. Ultimately, Libertas fared poorly at the box office.
Libertas was Croatia's submission to the 79th Academy Awards for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, but was not accepted as a nominee.
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