The winds of change blow through Sarajevo’s industry offering for 2024, with a new head of the CineLink Industry Days and a move across town for the industry activities.
The festival expansion to the business district in the west of the city will have the biggest effect on the industry offering, which now moves wholesale from the Hotel Europe to the Swissotel Sarajevo.
“We regard this as a step up,” says head of industry Masa Markovic. The Swissotel venue will allow for more industry meeting, conference and roundtable rooms than previously available to the festival.
It is closer to Cineplexx, where most festival screenings take place, to Sarajevo’s famous Hotel Holiday, where many industry guests stay; and to the Unitic twin skyscrapers, that have a cinema hall which will host the Work in Progress and Docu Rough Cut Boutique screenings. “Throughout the year, this is the busiest part of the city anyhow,” says Markovic. “It serves the purpose of the industry very well.”
At the start of this year Bosnian producer Ishak Jalimam replaced Amra Basic Camo, who headed up CineLink since founding it in 2003. Jalimam, who runs RealStage Productions and has worked at the festival since 2015, has spent the past seven months tracking projects from the region.
“In my first days I was focused on the projects, authors, directors – talking with people, going to festivals,” said Jalimam, who admits it is “a bit more hectic” now the festival approaches. “Mapping the journey of our projects is one of the main works we do through the year.”
He whittled the “hundreds” of submissions received by CineLink, down to 45 selected projects, across the Co-Production Market, Work in Progress, Drama, Docu Rough Cut Boutique, Talents from the East and Talents Sarajevo strands.
Jalimam is working alongside Markovic, another long-time festival staffer who has been head of industry since 2022. Markovic oversees all industry activity, including CineLink, talks and partnerships, while Jalimam curates the CineLink projects and is in charge of all selections. Over €150,000 in awards are available this year, including a doubling of the Female Voices Award to €20,000.
“We are children of the festival,” says Markovic, who underlines Jalimam’s experience as a producer is invaluable. “It’s important to have someone who can feel the market and what it needs, and what producers and filmmakers need.”
First-time visitors
Industry attendee numbers remain on a par with the post-pandemic years, at around 1,100. Around 20% of them are first-time visitors, including executives from companies including UK and Australian outfit ee-Saw Films, US independent studio Black Bear, and leading Mexican producer-distributor Piano. “This is a reflection of the festival and industry – it has this allure of being a place where things happen, where you can actually meet, and dedicate time to someone or to a project,” says Markovic.
CineLink receives the highest number of submissions from Turkish producers due to strong cultural ties with the country. “For Turkish projects we’re the first step into the international market – a bridge, so they feel connected,” says Jalimam who cites the festival’s longstanding partnership with Turkish National Radio Television.
Three of the nine Work in Progress projects this year hail from Turkey, including Banu Sivaci’s rural family mystery Hear The Yellow; and Tarik Aktas’ dystopian journey Kriegsausgabe.
There are no attendees from Russia – not through an official policy of exclusion from the festival, but because it has never been a site of interest for Russians, according to Markovic. “We are very dedicated to working with filmmakers from Ukraine,” she adds.
Ukrainian prrojects such as Philip Sotnychenko’s Times New Roman are participating in the Co-Production Market.
The festival is hosting delegations of producers from the UK (through the BFI), France, and Sweden. The countries were chosen so local producers could learn from these more established territories. “We look to the Nordics in terms of how they co-operate within the region, with co-productions and how the mobility of people can make audiovisual works,” says Markovic.
The CineLink Talks strand will include discussions on IP this year, and multiple panels on AI. Markovic suggests the latter topic may be considered differently in the Balkans than in Western Europe, due to “less stable” finance streams. “Film professionals in this part of the world have a tendency to use all the available means to make their ideas,” she says. “Somewhere where you cannot finance your film completely – perhaps you’re missing money for the editing – you might turn towards AI as a tool.”
“What we’re doing is questioning the ethical dimensions of the use of AI,” says Markovic. ”The motto of the CineLink Talks is the question of responsibility – who does what, and who should take care of it.”
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