The subject of this final paper is to define copyright in the film industry and understanding of cinematographic work in the Republic of Croatia with a brief overview of the international understanding of copyright in cinematography and to give examples related to copyright infringement. The paper will define in detail the concept of a cinematographic work and what is considered a cinematographic work. Also, a contract on a cinematographic work, a contract on audiovisual adaptation and a contract on audiovisual production will be described, which are considered the basic ways of regulating the relationship between the author of a cinematographic work and relevant persons who participated in its creation. The completion of the audiovisual (cinematographic) work will be treated separately as well as the termination of the audiovisual production contract. The film producer will be defined and processed as a separate component of the cinematographic work and his rights will be stated. The aim of this paper is to present copyright in the cinematography of the Republic of Croatia through copyright protection in positive regulations and through practical examples. The basic hypothesis of the paper is copyright protection, ie its conditions and manner of realization. Copyright is regulated differently in almost every national law. However, there are certain ways that authors of audiovisual works can use to protect their copyright. In writing this paper, the historical method, the method of compilation, the method of description, the method of analysis and synthesis, and the method of induction were used. The processing of copyright in world cinematography as well as the cinematography of the Republic of Croatia established that, regardless of the different way of standardizing the scope of copyright and protection, each legal system strives to protect a certain number of entities involved in filmmaking. However, the legislator of the Republic of Croatia in the proposal of the new Copyright Act wants to introduce innovations that will affect the copyright claims of individual entities involved in the creation of audiovisual (cinematographic) work.