SARAJEVO: FNE spoke to Amra Bakšić Čamo, the Head of CineLink, the industry section of the Sarajevo Film Festival, about the 2021 edition after the pandemic forced the last minute cancellation of the physical festival in 2020 and Cinelink went online. She talks about the lessons learned in 2020 and how the 2021 event was organised as a hybrid event.

SARAJEVO: The biopic Toma directed by famous Serbian actor/director/producer Dragan Bjelogrlić broke the 2021 record in Bosnia and Herzegovina with 40,877 admissions and 112,900 EUR / 220,815 BAM gross in its first week. The film was released by Oskar film from Banja Luka in 41 cinemas throughout the country on 23 September 2021.

SARAJEVO: FNE spoke to Jovan Marjanović, Co-director of Sarajevo Film Festival, about the festival’s return to its on site operations after being forced to cancel the 2020 on site edition in the last minute. He tells us about the importance of a physical event for audience and the lessons learned during the pandemic that are taking the festival forward.

SARAJEVO: Teona Strugar Mitevska is finishing the shoot for her sixth film The Happiest Man in The World with two shooting days in Sarajevo, after four weeks of shooting in North Macedonia. The film is a coproduction between North Macedonia, Slovenia, Croatia, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Denmark.

SARAJEVO: The acclaimed Bosnian director Pjer Žalica has started shooting his fourth feature film May Labour Day, a coproduction between Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, North Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro.

SARAJEVO: The Austrian/German coproduction Great Freedom / Grosse Freiheit by Sebastian Meise has received the Heart of Sarajevo for Best Feature Film at the 27th edition of the Sarajevo Film Festival. The closing ceremony was held on 19 August 2021, but the festival that opened on 13 August will wrap on 20 August 2021.

SARAJEVO: Fourteen documentary projects from FNE partner countries were selected for three programmes within the CineLink Industry Days: CineLink Work in Progress, Docu Rough Cut Boutique and Docu Talents from the East.

SARAJEVO: The Sarajevo Film Festival has awarded best regional TV series for the first time ever. Most of the awards went to the Serbian series The Family, created and directed by Bojan Vuletić.

SARAJEVO: Iván Szabó, the writer behind Land of Storms (2014), which premiered at the Berlinale and competed for the Heart of Sarajevo, returns to the Sarajevo Film Festival to present his TV series project The Grand Trial at the festival’s CineLink Drama held 14-19 August 2021.

SARAJEVO: Adrian Sitaru, whose feature film Ilegitim (Domestic Film, 2016) won the C.I.C.A.E. Award in the Berlinale Forum, and Tudor Giurgiu, whose third feature film Why Me? (Libra Film, 2015) premiered in the Berlinale Panorama, are presenting their TV series projects at Sarajevo Film Festival’s CineLinkDrama, running 14-19 August 2021.