The 25th Sarajevo Film Festival will take place from August 16th to 23rd. 53 films have been selected from the 950 sent in – all from south-eastern Europe, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. Each is in the running to win a Heart of Sarajevo in one of the four categories: feature film, documentary, short film and student film.
Twenty-three of these films will be screened as world premieres, like the documentaries How Far The Stars by Hungarian director Katalin Barsony and Queen Lea by Turkish director Pelin Esmer. In the two main competitive sections there are 9 feature films and 16 documentaries – 10 long and 6 short.
At its opening ceremony the festival will celebrate the work of Polish film-maker Pawel Pawlikowski. He will receive a life-time achievement award and there will be a retrospective of his work, giving festival-goers the chance to rediscover his films, from the documentaries he made for the BBC to his more recent features such as Ida and Cold War.
In addition, on the sidelines of the festival, the Talents Sarajevo programme unveiled its selection of 64 emerging young directors, editors, screenwriters, actors and critics. For its 13th edition, this programme of meetings and training-sessions will be based around the theme of innocence. The list of participants is to be found here.
Sources: https://www.screendaily.com , https://cineuropa.org, https://www.story.hr
