News
CineLink Industry Days Reveals Projects Selected for CineLink Drama 2026
CineLink Drama has unveiled seven promising projects from Southeast Europe selected for its 2026 edition
CineLink Drama, a flagship programme of Sarajevo Film Festival’s CineLink Industry Days, dedicated to supporting drama series in development, has unveiled seven promising projects from Southeast Europe selected for its 2026 edition.
“In its tenth edition, CineLink Drama’s selection reflects a series landscape in Southeast Europe that is becoming more confident, more defined, and more fluent in thinking across genres, audiences, and markets. By bringing together filmmakers moving from author-driven cinema into series alongside new voices already shaped by episodic storytelling, the strand continues to hold a space where continuity meets renewal. It helps shape a regional industry that is strengthening its international profile and becoming more attentive to the strategic value of IP, including the ways local stories can circulate and generate adaptation beyond their original market. This conversation will continue in April through Exploring Synergies, a CineLink Industry Days Training and Skills initiative that gathers leading professionals from the audiovisual and publishing fields around adaptation, IP, cross-format storytelling, and the emerging microdrama form.” - Maša Marković, Head of Industry.
“Throughout these ten years, we have come to recognize that the region is rich in strong ideas and compelling stories. At the same time, the craft of serialized storytelling has seen a significant rise in quality, steadily moving toward a more mature and refined level.
This year’s CineLink Drama selection brings together seven diverse projects, spanning genres from political thriller to horror comedy. It is an exciting lineup featuring projects from across the region, with stories set throughout Europe, from the Balkans to Scandinavia and the Baltics, and with strong, organic co-production potential.
This selection demonstrates that, despite the dynamic and often challenging financing conditions for series production in the region, there remains a strong creative urgency among authors to engage with this format and to tell compelling stories across genres and styles.” - Asja Krsmanović, Head of CineLink.
This year, CineLink Drama will be organised together with the CineLink Industry Days forum Exploring Synergies: Managing Intellectual Property Across Creative Industries, bringing together development, collaboration, and cross-industry exchange within a unified programme. Through this partnership, selected teams will take part in an onsite workshop in April, where they will work closely with experienced script editors and leading industry professionals on further developing their projects, focusing on financing and production strategies, marketing approaches, and overall presentation while also gaining practical insights into adaptation processes across creative disciplines highlighting the rise of microdramas and vertical storytelling formats. The programme will then continue in August during CineLink Industry Days, culminating in a tailored workshop and the CineLink Drama Pitch.
Selected Projects:
CHAIN REACTION
Creator: Grega Švabič
Writers: Grega Švabič, Mirta Švabič Zajc, Jaka Šuligoj
Director: Jaka Šuligoj
Producer: Peter Perunovič
Production Company: E75
Country: Slovenia
Genre: Action-comedy
Snow. Speed. Radiation. In a mountain resort, rebellious snowboarders uncover a nuclear conspiracy in a uranium mine. To expose the truth, they trigger a lethal chain reaction of violence.
HEDGEHOGS IN THE HAZE
Creators/Writers: Ermin Bravo, Džana Pinjo
Directors: Danis Tanović, Nermin Hamzagić
Producers: Ishak Jalimam, Lara Grozdanić
Production Company: Realstage
Co-Production Companies: Brand Vision DOO, Agitprop, Para Film & Theatre AS
Countries: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Bulgaria, Norway
Genre: Dramedy
Three women. Best friends. And some men around them. All in a struggle for existence. A box enters their lives. Pandora’s box? Or the solution to all their problems?
SMALL YUGOSLAVIA
Creators/Writers: Teona Strugar Mitevska, Sonja Prosenc
Producer: Labina Mitevska
Production Companies: Sisters and Brother Mitevski, Entre chien et loup
Countries: North Macedonia, Belgium
Genre: Horror comedy
In a modernist apartment complex where residents vanish without a trace, two vampire queens, a mother and a daughter, both over 50, both addicts, are on a mission to purify the world.
STRINGERS
Creator/Writer: Nikola Kuprešanin
Director: Danis Tanović
Producer: Siniša Juričić
Production Company: Nukleus Film
Country: Croatia
Genre: Political thriller
When a translator is murdered in Riga, three freelance journalists – a desperate local fixer, a broke British investigator, and compromised American veteran – find their separate inquiries converging.
THE VALLEY
Creator/Director: Özcan Alper
Writers: Özcan Alper, Erman Bostan
Producer: Soner Alper
Production Company: NAR FILM PRODUCTION
Country: Türkiye
Genre: Crime thriller
Brutal murders haunt a fog-shrouded Black Sea village. Captain İsmet, Detective Kenan, and pedagogue Aysun uncover dark truths hidden in the town’s silence, where fear and guilt protect the killer.
THE 9TH BORDER
Creator: Vitalli Ye
Writer: Vyacheslav Yushkov
Director: Valentin Shpakov
Producer: Vitalli Ye
Production Company: Starlight Films
Country: Ukraine
Genre: Crime thriller
An Austrian investigator teams up with a Ukrainian detective after a woman's burned body is found in the Carpathians. As more victims emerge, they face a cross-border killer beyond all logic.
YOU CAN ALWAYS COME BACK
Creator: Tena Gojić
Writer: Hana Jušić
Producer: Miljenka Čogelja
Production Companies: Pipser, Dinaridi Film
Country: Croatia
Genre: Family drama
As war tears Yugoslavia apart, a mother leaves her three daughters in search of a better life on the other side of the continent.