For a richly pedigreed event that is intimately woven into the fabric of its host city, the Sarajevo Film Festival could be forgiven for resting on its laurels and choosing its 30th edition as an opportunity to look back — to reflect on its storied beginnings during the four-year siege that all but reduced the Bosnian capital to rubble in the early-1990s.
Instead, the organizers are introducing sweeping changes that will alter the look and feel of the event moving forward, with the nucleus of festival activities shifting from its historic home in the heart of Sarajevo’s old town to the modern part of the city.
Festival director Jovan Marjanović, who joined the Sarajevo fest two decades ago as a fresh-faced high-school graduate, tells Variety that while this year’s event will certainly pay homage to the past, festival leadership is “fully focused on the future,” adding: “I think this is setting the course for the next 25, 30 years.”
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While in years past the hub of industry and social activity during the mid-summer event has centered on a buzzy strip on the fringe of Sarajevo’s Turkish Quarter, from the National Theater and the Bosnian Cultural Center to the historic Hotel Europe, that locus will shift to downtown’s Hotel Holiday and the adjacent Cineplexx Cinemas, an eight-screen multiplex built in 2021. Across the street, a newly built open-air cinema will also serve as a screening venue, while the nearby Festival Garden — another new edition this year — hosted the opening party and will function as an event hub throughout the festival, which runs Aug. 16 – 23.
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Meanwhile, the Hotel Europe — an iconic, 140-year-old building dating back to the Austro-Hungarian Empire — will no longer serve as the focal point for the CineLink industry program, ceding that honor to downtown’s sleek, modern, glass-and-steel Swissotel. The move underscores the fundamental shift underway in the festival’s relationship with Sarajevo. “It’s really about finding new places in this city and making the festival a part of them — regenerating those places and reclaiming them for culture and entertainment,” Marjanović says.
The changes highlight the Sarajevo fest’s mission to “bring the best of cinema and TV to our audiences” by keeping pace with the times. “You have to reinvent things all the time and stay ahead of the curve, or adapt to whatever the needs are,” Marjanović says, pointing to changes such as the addition of a hugely popular TV strand in 2016. “This is what we have learned over the years, and I think we continue refining our different programs to achieve this.”
The festival opened Aug. 16 with the world premiere of “My Late Summer,” the latest from Academy Award-winning Bosnian filmmaker Danis Tanović (“No Man’s Land”), who opened the festival’s 2021 edition with “Not So Friendly Neighborhood Affair.” The film is billed as a comedy-drama about a young woman who travels to a remote island to settle a family inheritance, only to find herself in a search for her own identity while confronting questions from her past. Tanović, a two-time Berlin Silver Bear winner, was honored with an Honorary Heart of Sarajevo Award in 2014 for his outstanding contribution to cinema and his support for his hometown festival.
Across the festival’s four competition sections for feature, documentary, short and student film, 54 films will compete for Heart of Sarajevo Awards, including 19 world, nine international, three European, 21 regional and three national premieres. World premieres include the competition selection “Dwelling Among the Gods,” Serbian director Vuk Ršumović’s first feature since his Venice Critics’ Week prizewinner “No One’s Child” (2014), and Mirjana Karanović’s “Mother Mara,” the Serbian actor-director’s follow-up to her directorial debut, “A Good Wife,” which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2016. The film will be playing out of competition with a Gala Screening.
Eight films, meanwhile, will vie for top honors in the feature film competition, including Romanian filmmaker Emanuel Pârvu’s “Three Kilometers to the End of the World,” which competed for the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival; Mo Harawe’s Un Certain Regard player “The Village Next to Paradise,” the first Somali film ever to play on the Croisette; “Holy Electricity,” from Georgian filmmaker Tato Kotetishvili, arriving in Sarajevo fresh off its premiere in Locarno’s Concorso Cineasti del Presente’s section; and Slovenian filmmaker Sonja Prosenc’s “Family Therapy,” which debuted this year in Tribeca.
The event’s 30th edition also promises to be a star-studded event — a welcome return to form after last year’s Hollywood strikes prevented a number of luminaries from walking the red carpet outside Sarajevo’s fabled National Theater. Two-time Academy Award winner Alexander Payne (“The Holdovers”) will be receiving an Honorary Heart of Sarajevo Award and will also hold a masterclass while introducing a screening of his 2004 adapted screenplay Oscar winner “Sideways.”
Screen icons John Turturro and Meg Ryan, meanwhile, will both present selections from their celebrated careers while receiving lifetime achievement awards, with Ryan appearing in conversation with Oscar winner Tanović. “American Fiction” writer-director Cord Jefferson will be in attendance to host a masterclass. And acclaimed Palestinian auteur Elia Suleiman (“It Must Be Heaven”) was feted for his contributions to cinema with an Honorary Heart of Sarajevo Award at the festival’s opening ceremony (pictured). He’ll also be honored with a retrospective of his selected works.
Adding to the star power is a feature-film competition jury headed by Oscar-nominated writer-director Paul Schrader (“First Reformed”), an Honorary Heart of Sarajevo Award recipient in 2022. He’ll be joined by Swedish actor and producer Noomi Rapace (“Lamb”), Finnish director-writer Juho Kuosmanen (“Compartment No. 6”), Sarajevo-born, Paris-based director, writer and editor Una Gunjak (“Excursion”) and Slovenian actor Sebastian Cavazza (“Men Don’t Cry”).
On the eve of this year’s opening night, Marjanović says it’s already shaping up to be another banner year for Sarajevo. “Last year was a record year, and this year promises to break that record,” he says.
Three decades since its humble beginnings, the festival continues to position itself as a key incubator of regional talent with a dash of Hollywood glamor — a place to discover new voices and revisit old favorites, which has been the festival’s calling card since day one.
“Thirty years of a festival that brings positive energy and a good spotlight on the city every year, I think it’s really amazing,” says Marjanović. “It creates a lot of pride for the citizens and for the country. It’s great to feel that love. It’s really driving all of us forward.”
