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A Word from our Selectors:
Competition Feature Film
Competition Short Film
Competition Documentary Film
In Focus
New Currents & New Currents Short
Panorama
Panorama Documentaries
Tribute to…
Programmes
Competition Feature Film
The Competition Programme in this category gives priority to the films which will have either world or international premiere at the Sarajevo Film Festival. All the films will be shown in primetime, at the Sarajevo National Theatre, preceded by screenings for journalists, photo sessions for photographers, interviews and press conferences, which are to take place prior to the official screening. The Competition Programme is also a Red Carpet event. As the main programme of the Sarajevo Film Festival, the Competition Programme attracts over 150 guest directors, screen-writers, producers, actors, actresses and other people from film industry. Over the past four years, this Programme has become the most important meeting point of the East European film and all of those interested in cinematography of the countries represented.
Competition Short Film
The goal of this Programme is to discover and promote the young and talented authors who, with their films, change the world or express their attitudes about the way in which the world changes.
Selection of this Programme has always been very diverse in terms of approach and film expression. The short films were always a special category in the cinematographies of the region, and often the form by which these films were known and recognized in the world of film. Short film is not only the author’s step towards the feature film but also a specific way of the film expression. Short films were always about testing the boundaries of the film language, breaking conventions and challenging “rules”, and establishing new forms.
Films in this selection are competing for the Best Short Film Award and two special mentions of the Jury. The winners of this Programme, together with short films from the New Currents Programme, are directly in the competition for the nomination of the European Film Academy in the category of short film.
In Focus
Focused on the regional cinematography, and on the movies from this part of the world, that were not shown at major festivals despite their extraordinary quality. This region was OFF five years ago and now it is completely In FOCUS.
Sarajevo Film Festival has over the last few years bravely and successfully promoted films from the region and discovered now successful and respected film authors like Pjer Žalica (GORI VATRA – FUSE), winner in 2003, Zornitza Sophia (MILA FROM MARS), SFF winner in 2004; Arsen Ostojić (TA DIVNA SPLITSKA NOĆ – THAT BEATIFUL SPLIT NIGHT) winner of the Special Jury Award in the same year, Andrea Štaka (DAS FRAULEIN), 2006 winner and Faruk Lončarević (MAMA I TATA – MOM AND DAD), 2006 winner of the Special Jury Award; and directed attention again at authors Georgi Djulgerov (LADY ZEE), and Isa Qosja (KUKUMI) SFF winners in 2005.
Programmer for Competition Feature and Short selection and In Focus is Elma Tataragić. She is one of the founders of Sarajevo Film Festival. She co-wrote FIRST DEATH EXPERIENCE (Cinefondation 2001 – Cannes Film Festival) short NORTH WENT MAD. She has produced and co-wrote the feature film SNOW shown at Cannes 2008 – Semaine de la critique where the film won the Grand Prix. She is also general secretary of BH Filmmakers Association. She is teaching screenwriting at Sarajevo Academy of Performing Arts.
Competition Documentary Film
A decade of transition in which many countries faced with several difficulties has passed. After the new political systems, and somewhere even completely new states in the region were established, the film has become more than a mere cultural matter. It has become a sophisticated way of expressing identity of a nation and creating a recognizable voice that echoes as far as abroad. On film one often reflects and examines political reality and attempts of establishing dialogue and solving mutual conflicts. In that, documentaries are particularly important.
According to world trends over the past years, there are more and more creative auteur documentaries in the region, while in the production of TV documentaries and reportage an attempt was made towards a more serious works, based on in-depth investigations and expressed in an inherent film language.
Since Sarajevo Film Festival very much insists on supporting creative documentaries in the region, in 2006. The Award for the Best Documentary was established. In addition to that, films from this selection are competing for the Human Rights Award, which is awarded to the best film dealing with the issue of human rights.
Programer for this selection is Rada Šešić. Screenwriter, director and film critic. She made three movies: Room Without a View in 1997, Soske in 2001 and In Whitest Solitude in 2002. She also writes for Skrien (The Netherlands), Dox (Denmark), Film Guide- Variety (UK) Documentary Encyclopedia (USA), Film Annual (Croatia) collaborated on the book "24 Frames" by Dina Iordanova. She is the selector of the one of programmes of the International Kerala Film Festival, India.
New Currents
The programme includes, above all, works by authors who break the rules of film as a medium and who test the limits of viewing.
News Currents section clarifies its programming policy by proposing essentially first and second feature films from all corners of the world, and also by positioning itself with clear intention to look for and discover the great filmmakers of tomorrow – the director with a will to brake norms, to do away with the chains of narration, to move beyond the borders of what has been shown before.
New Currents has been able to explore the development of digital filmmaking from its form-braking infancy until now, to a level of maturity where its borders with celluloid have become blurred. The New Currents Programme is a strong reflection of the different directions in which independent film is moving today.
From its beginning New Currents feature film selection is programmed by Philippe Bober, an accomplished film producer. With his film distribution and production company The Coproduction Office, Bober has been involved in the production of recent festival successes such as The Battle in Haven by Carlos Reygadas, Death of Mr. Lazarescu by Cristi Puiu, 12:08 East of Bucharest by Corneliu Poromboiu, Import/Export by Urlich Seidl and You, The Living by Roy Anderson.
News Currents Shorts
New Currents Shorts is a panorama of recent international creations, a subjective selection of film from all over Europe, different in there aesthetic and narrative biases. There is no specific tendency, but rather expressive particularities. For, the wager of this choice is to discover the authors of tomorrow while showing the possibilities short film can offer.
Together with the Competition Shorts, New Currents Shorts films are competing for PRIX UIP and nomination for the Best Short Film at the European Film Academy.
Programmer for this selection is Vanja Kaluđerčić. She is a regular co-worker of Motovun Film Festival. She worked on different projects at Slovenian Cinematheque and arthouse cinema Kinodvor, Ljubljana. She is one of the cofounders of Isola Cinema - a film festival dedicated to African, Asian, Latin American and Eastern European cinema. She writes for Slovenian magazine for cinema, Ekran. From 2004 till 2007 she programs Human Rights Film Festival in Zagreb. From 2006 till 2008 she works at International Documentary Festival of Zagreb where she manages ZagrebDox Pro. Since 2006 she is regularly running film evenings in Zagreb's popular cultural club Mochvara. From 2006 to 2008 she worked at Hulahop Film and Art production company, and is in charge of production management of World Festival of Animated Films – Animafest. Currently she works in Paris at Coproduction Office where she is in charge of acquisitions and short film catalogue.
Panorama
Panorama attempts to bridge avant-garde and mainstream films with exceptional narrative films. It is comprised of accomplished, provocative films made by international auteur. Invited directors’ range from debuting filmmakers to established veterans. All play with the conventions of narrative, with ways of telling stories. Some are endlessly provocative, others aesthetically challenging, still others extraordinarily polished in their execution.
Many of the films have been honored at top festivals, while others are relatively unknown discoveries.
Panorama Documentaries
Like the fiction-heavy Panorama section, the Panorama Documentaries is, of necessity, a highly curated selection of works from all over the world. These are rigorous works, on film and video, covering a wide range of topics, often from the flashpoints of the world, documentaries that search both contemporary and historical truths. None has a typical television look. Here we show documentary art. All of these works reshape their subject matter, in formally satisfying ways. They also reshape the viewers perception, at least for a while. More than fiction, documentaries respect the world as it is: They just revise it in a manner that takes the spectator on a voyage from naturalism to uber-naturalism.
Refusing to yield to limitations imposed by time and equipment, many of their directors go beyond the usual boundaries of documentary exploration. Some works are chosen because they are so visually stunning. Others reveal unbelievable access. All succeed in shaking our usual assumptions about society, nature, and ourselves.
Tribute to…
In previous years, the Sarajevo Film Festival has hosted and presented retrospectives of authors whose uncompromising creative outlooks brought down many taboos in film and society alike, and attracted great attention of both the audiences and the media.
Guests of the Sarajevo Film Festival Tribute to Programme in previous years were:
• Steve Buscemi 2000
• Mike Leigh 2001
• Stephen Frears 2002
• Peter Mullan 2003
• Dušan Makavejev and Gaspar Noe 2004
• Alexander Payne 2005
• Abel Ferrara and Béla Tarr 2006
• Ulrich Seidl 2007
• Todd Haynes 2008
• Jia Zhang-ke 2009
Panorama feature and documentary selection, as well as the Tribute to.. are programmed by Howard Feinstein, a film critic and journalist living in New York. Before he committed primarily to writing, he was a researcher at the Museum of Modern Art’s department of film, and film editor at the Village Voice. He has written for many publications, including The New York Times, Vanity Fair and GQ. Currently he writes for the Guardian, Filmmaker magazine, The Advocate and indieWIRE.
Heineken Open Air
Heineken Open Air Programme offers the first-class film achievements to the satisfaction of the most demanding film fans. Every night, this attractive programme offers an unforgettable experience of watching films under the stars on the biggest screen in the region and at top projection quality.
Apart from premieres of the new Bosnian films, the Heineken Open Air offers top quality European film, independent American production and films from the recent documentary feature production. Another very important thing for the future development of the Open Air concept is the fact that nearly all of the films shown will be attended by several guests, producers, actors or directors, who will personally present their films to our numerous and diverse audience.
Children's Programme
The Sarajevo Film festival's Children's Programme is a unique selection of films which attracts over 30 000 young viewers from all over Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was founded during the very first years of the Festival and its goal was to gather and entertain the children of the post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina; for some of them this was their first visit to the cinema. This programme was well known for its screenings KSC Skenderija venue, which for years was specially converted into the largest movie theatre in South-eastern Europe. During the last three years we have carefully balanced big-budget animated films with a selection of independent children’s films to make a satisfying programme for this numerous audience. For the duration of the programme, prior to each screening, the children from all over Bosnia and Herzegovina participate in numerous additional educational and entertaining activities. In addition to the main screenings, that will from this year take place in Bosnian Cultural Centre (BKC) additional re-runs of all the films within the Children's Programme are shown in the Novi Grad Municipality movie theatre.
TeenArena
TeenArena programme is dedicated to young viewers ranging from the age of 13 to 19. This program gave a generation of teenagers access to the largest film festival in the region, and provided them with films suited to their taste and age.
The focus is mostly on independent European feature fiction films, which compete for the Best Teen Film award, which is nominated by the joint votes of a jury and the audience.
TeenArena tries to attract young filmmakers and actors, who will interact with the domestic audiences through carefully organized discussions and events.
Katrin Cartlidge Fund
Shortly after the 8th Sarajevo Film Festival, the sudden death of British actress Katrin Cartlidge stunned the world. A favourite in both film and theatre, Katrin Cartlidge left behind an indelible trace in the world of film, as well as in the hearts of all those who admired her achievements.
The Katrin Cartlidge Foundation was created in memory of the life and work of this brilliant actress. It exists to encourage, in the form of an annual bursary awarded to a new creative voice in cinema, the independence, singularity and integrity of spirit that Katrin Cartlidge powerfully embraced and exemplified in her own lifetime.
Each year, the Foundation’s Trustees select a curator (or curators) who search for a recipient for the Foundation's annual bursary. The grant constitutes only a small part of the support that the Foundation offers these young artists; perhaps the most valuable part of the award is the mentoring that they receive from the Foundation's Trustees and Patrons who include some of the world's finest filmmakers, producers and actors.
Sarajevo City of Film
Sarajevo City of Film is the fund supporting the realisation of short micro-budget films, created through artistic and technical cooperation between the young film authors from the South-Eastern Europe.
