Sarajevo Film Festival has selected 20 features in the competition programme for its 27th edition, which will run in-person from August 13-20.
Nine films have been chosen for the Feature Film section of the programme for fiction titles, including two world premieres – Dušan Kasalica’s Montenegrin-Serbian title The Elegy Of Laurel, and Cristina Grosan’s Hungarian film Things Worth Weeping For.
Other films in the Feature Film section include Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović’s Murina, which won the Camera d’Or for best debut film at Cannes Film Festival last week; and Norika Sefa’s Looking For Venera, winner of a special jury award in International Film Festival Rotterdam’s Tiger competition in January, which Film Republic boarded for international rights this month
The documentary strand of the competition programme is comprised of 16 titles, of which 11 are features and eight are world premieres. These include Disturbed Earth, directed by Kumjana Novakova and Guillermo Carreras-Candi, about the Srebrenica massacre in the Bosnian war; and Máté Kōrōsi’s Hungarian title Divas, about three 20-year-old women obsessed with make-up, clothes and social media.
The documentary section also includes the world premiere of When We Were Them, a short directed by Danis Tanović, who won best foreign film at the 2002 Oscars for No Man’s Land, and Damir Šagolj.
The competition programme also includes sections for short film and student film.
The festival will award a total of €43,000 (£36,845) in prize money to the competition films, led by €16,000 (£13,706) for the best title in the Feature Film section.
The selection team was led by the festival’s creative director Izeta Građević, and received 683 submissions in total.
Serbian actress Jasna Djuricic will chair the jury of the competition programme, joined by filmmakers Mike Cahill and Lili Horvát, artistic director of Vienna International Film Festival Eva Sangiorgi, and executive director of the Austrian Film Commission Martin Schweighofer.
Sarajevo 2021 competition programme – features
Feature Film
The Elegy Of Laurel (Mont-Ser) dir. Dušan Kasalica – world premiere
Things Worth Weeping For (Hun) dir. Cristina Grosan – world premiere
Bebia, À Mon Seul Désir (Geo-UK) dir. Juja Dobrachkous
Celts (Ser) dir. Milica Tomović
Great Freedom (Austria-Ger) dir. Sebastian Meise
Looking For Venera (Kos) dir. Norika Sefa
Moon, 66 Questions (Gr-Fr) dir. Jaqueline Lentzou
Murina (Cro-Braz-US-Slovenia) dir. Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović
The Hill Where Lionesses Roar (Kos-Fr) dir. Luàna Bajrami
Documentary Film
Disturbed Earth (Bos-Sp-N Mac) dirs. Kumjana Novakova, Guillermo Carreras-Candi – world premiere
Divas (Hun) dir. Máté Kőrösi – world premiere
ŽŽŽ (Journal About Želimir Žilnik) (Ser) dir. Janko Baljak – world premiere
Sunny (Geo) dir. Keti Machavariani
Factory To The Workers (Cro) dir. Srđan Kovačević
Les Enfants Terribles (Tur-Fr-Ger) dir. Ahmet Necdet Çupur
Looking For Horses (Bos-Neth-Fr) dir. Stefan Pavlović
Recipe For Hate (Ser) dir. Filip Čolović
Reconciliation (Slovenia-Ser-Mont-Kos) dir. Marija Zidar
Soldat Ahmet (Austria) dir. Jannis Lenz
Landscapes Of Resistance (Ser-Fr-Ger) dir. Marta Popivoda
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