Festival In Focus: Why Sarajevo Is Shining The Spotlight On Local TV Drama

Christopher Vourlias Sebastian Meise’s “Great Freedom,” a prison drama about a gay man repeatedly incarcerated under a draconian law outlawing homosexuality in West Germany, won the award for best feature film at the Sarajevo Film Festival.The Austrian director took home the Heart of Sarajevo at Thursday night’s ceremony, while leading man Georg Friedrich won the award for best actor for a film that won the runner-up prize in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard sidebar.

Christopher Vourlias The premiere of Serbian drama series “Bad Blood” Wednesday night at the Sarajevo Film Festival was more than just the usual red-carpet event.

Marta Balaga Female filmmakers need to make sure they can continue telling the kind of stories they want, said Croatian director Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović during Sarajevo Film Festival’s CineLink Talk. Kusijanović, who recently won the Camera d’Or at Cannes for her debut feature “Murina,” criticized the Oscars’ new diversity rules for encouraging a form of reverse engineering.

Christopher Vourlias Serbian drama “The Family,” which swept the newly launched Heart of Sarajevo TV Awards at the Sarajevo Film Festival on Monday, has sold to North America, Variety can reveal.Directed by Bojan Vuletić (“Requiem for Mrs.

Christopher Vourlias U2 frontman Bono made a surprise appearance at the Sarajevo Film Festival on Sunday, where he introduced a digitally restored version of Wim Wenders’ “The Million Dollar Hotel” – a film the iconic rock star presented at the Bosnian fest more than 20 years ago.Addressing a full house at the Sarajevo National Theater – where fans had gathered outside for more than an hour in the blistering heat, clutching photos and singing along to U2’s hits as they waited for his arrival on

Christopher Vourlias Describing its world premiere on the opening night of the Sarajevo Film Festival as “magic,” Oscar-winning Bosnian director Danis Tanović (“No Man’s Land”) called his latest feature “a love letter to our city,” offering it as a beacon of hope in troubled times to the people of Sarajevo.Speaking to Variety the day after the premiere, Tanović described an emotional night as his feel-good film “Not So Friendly Neighborhood Affair” opened the festival’s 27th edition.“For me,

Jef Holm and Robby Hayes aren’t the first pair of former Bachelorette contestants to strike up a friendship, but things didn’t stay rosy between the pair for long.

Christopher Vourlias For an industry struggling to regain its footing after the disruptions of the pandemic year, amid ongoing fears surrounding the lethal Delta variant and uncertainty about the months ahead, few sights this summer will be as welcome to festival regulars as the buzzy terrace of Sarajevo’s Hotel Europe, the de facto hub of industry events during the Sarajevo Film Festival.Having survived two World Wars and the shelling that devastated much of the city in the 1990s, the historic

Christopher Vourlias Variety has been given exclusive access to the trailer for “Toma,” Dragan Bjelogrlić’s biopic about Serbian singer Toma Zdravković, which closes the Sarajevo Film Festival.“Toma” is a portrait of the iconic singer-songwriter, who was born in the former Yugoslavia and was known as much for his music as his bohemian way of life. Released 30 years after his untimely death, the film will have its world premiere Aug.

Christopher Vourlias Grasshopper Film has acquired Marta Popivoda’s “Landscapes of Resistance,” a feature-length documentary about a 97-year-old antifascist fighter that premiered in Rotterdam and will compete this week at the Sarajevo Film Festival, Variety can reveal. The deal covers U.S.

Fyre Festival following a “shambolic” inaugural event over the weekend.The festival took place on Sunday (August 8), bringing what organisers billed as the capital’s “first ever festival dedicated to R&B and Hip Hop culture” to north London’s Trent Park.Among those booked to perform to 15,000 ticketholders – who each paid up to £95 to attend – were the likes of Fat Joe, Blackstreet, Fatman Scoop, Eve, Firin Squad and Bobby V.As the Daily Mail reports, however, fans were left calling for refunds

Spain’s San Sebastian International Film Festival made the controversial decision to honour Johnny Depp with its Donostia Award.

If there was ever doubt about the resilience of the cultural sector during times of great turmoil, one only need look to the Sarajevo Film Festival to see how an industry can, quite literally, rise from the ashes. The festival began during the Bosnian War in 1995, in the midst of a near four-year siege on Sarajevo, which ravaged the capital. To this day, it remains the longest siege of a capital city in the history of modern warfare.

Radio silence. Erika Jayne is maintaining her distance from her estranged husband, Tom Girardi, as they’re caught in the middle of an increasingly complicated legal battle.

We haven’t even begun the circuit of fall film festivals this year, but the folks at Sundance are already deep into planning their 2022 event. And with COVID cases spiking around the US, it appears the Sundance organizers aren’t going to take any chances, with a vaccination requirement for all of those people that want to attend the event.

Mark Wahlberg is celebrating a big milestone. The "Joe Bell" actor, 50, took to Instagram on Sunday to share a sweet snap of himself and his wife, Rhea Durham, to mark their 12th wedding anniversary.

The 2021 San Sebastian Film Festival (September 17-25) has revealed the 13 features that will compete in its New Directors showcase.