Sarajevo Film Festival opens

15/08/2008

This year's Sarajevo Film Festival will screen more than 170 films in 15 programmes. Attendees from around the world will be able to see documentaries, feature films and shorts from the Southeast European region.

By Envesa Hodzic-Kovac for Southeast European Times in Sarajevo -- 15/08/08

The Sarajevo Film Festival opens on Friday (August 15th) evening. [Envesa Hodzic-Kovac]

The 14th Sarajevo Film Festival (SFF) opens on Friday (August 15th) with a screening of the feature film "Snow" -- a Bosnian-German-French-Iranian co-production directed by Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH)'s Aida Begic. The film premiered at this year's Cannes Film Festival and won the Grand Prix of the Semaine de la critique programme.

This year's SFF offers a diverse selection of 174 films -- mostly independent productions -- by artists around the world. The films will be presented within 15 programmes: Competition Features, Competition Shorts, In Focus, Competition Documentaries, Tribute to Todd Haynes, Panorama, Panorama Documentaries, New Currents, New Currents Shorts, Open Air, Children's Programme, TeenArena, All Shorts, Special Screenings and Sarajevo City of Film.

US actors Kevin Spacey and Orlando Bloom are among the celebrities who will attend the festival, which runs through August 23rd.

The regional film industry and its promotion and development are a top focus of the festival, resulting in the screening of 62 regional productions. The main event is the Competition Programme, which is open to filmmakers from Albania, Austria, BiH, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Greece, Croatia, Cyprus, Hungary, Macedonia, Malta, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, Turkey and Kosovo.

In the feature section of the Competition Programme, ten films compete for four awards: Best Film, Special Jury Award, Best Actress and Best Actor.

This year's contest participants are "We've Never Been to Venice" (Slovenia), "Buick Riviera" (Croatia-BiH); "The Fourth Man" (Serbia); "Girls" (Hungary); "Delta" (Hungary); "Dot" (Turkey); "My Marlon and Brando" (Turkey), "Autumn" (Turkey-Germany), "Kino Lika" (Croatia) and "March" (Austria).

In the shorts section of the Competition Programme, 16 regional short films will compete for Best Film and Special Mention.

In the documentary portion, 15 regional documentaries are vying for Best Film and the Human Rights Award, the latter funded by the Swiss foreign ministry. Other festival awards are the Prix UIP for the best short film, EDN Talent Grant, CICAE Award, Audience Award and FIPRESCI Jury Prize.

The SFF and its industry section, CineLink Co-Production Market, present the best feature films and works in progress by the filmmakers, producers and directors of Southeast Europe to international distributors, TV buyers and festival programmers.

To date, through the efforts of Cinelink, 12 films have been made -- two of which will appear in this year's Competition Programme.

The SFF, one of the biggest cultural events in BiH, welcomes more than 100,000 attendees each year.