City Sarajevo Showbiz Latest News and Updates

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentKino Lorber has acquired North American rights for Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović’s debut feature “Murina” which won the Golden Camera Award at last year’s Cannes Film Festival.Executive produced by Martin Scorsese and lushing lensed by Hélène Louvart (“The Lost Daughter”), “Murina” will be playing on opening night of the First Look Festival at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York.“Murina” is a tense and sensual tale about a restless teenager, Julija, whose urge to break free from her oppressive father and isolated existence in coastal Croatia is triggered by the visit of a family friend. Variety‘s Jessica Kiang wrote in her review that “If Patricia Highsmith had ever written a coming-of-age story set on the rocky, clear-watered Croatian coastline, it might have looked a lot like Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović’s bright, brooding debut.” The movie also boasts a breakthrough performance by Gracija Filipovic, a promising young actor and professional swimmer who was one of this year’s 10 Shooting Stars at the Berlinale.

Sarajevo Director Exits After 27 Years

Leo Barraclough International Features EditorMirsad Purivatra has stepped down as Sarajevo Film Festival director after a 27-year run, and has been replaced by Jovan Marjanović, who was previously in charge of the festival’s industry department and the festival co-director.Purivatra, the founder of the festival, will assume the role of president of the Obala Art Centar Association, the umbrella organization behind the festival.“I am proud of everything we have accomplished over the last 27 years. We started from nothing, when our city was under siege, and today we are a globally renowned institution attended by filmmakers and film industry professionals from the region and the whole world,” Purivatra said.“We have faced many challenges on this journey.

Kathryn Kates, a veteran character actress who appeared in such TV series as Orange Is the New Black, Seinfeld and Law & Order: SVU and The Sopranos prequel movie The Many Saints of Newark, has died. She was 73.

U2 are embarrassing and have a shit name. Not my words, people. Not this time, anyway.

Bono is opening up about why he doesn’t listen to any U2 songs, revealing that he’s a bit embarrassed by them.

Awards Chatter” podcast. “I’ve been in the car when one of our songs has come on the radio and I’ve been the color of, as we say in Dublin, scarlet,” he said in an interview along with bandmate The Edge. “I’m just so embarrassed.”He continued: “The one that I can listen to the most is ‘Miss Sarajevo’ with Luciano Pavarotti.

While speaking with the Times‘ “Awards Chatter” podcast, U2 frontman Bono reveals he hates the band’s name, his own singing voice and most of the songs the group has released.

Jessica Kiang There are three white fortresses that neatly demarcate the divides so evocatively drawn in Igor Drljača’s “The White Fortress,” recently named Bosnia and Herzegovina’s submission for the 94th Oscars. There’s the grim, encircling tower block in which scrappy low-level hustler Faruk (Pavle Čemerkić) lives with his grandmother.

Naman Ramachandran Luana Bajrami has won best director and the Discovery Award for best debut feature for “The Hill Where Lionesses Roar” at the 29th Raindance Film Festival (Oct. 27 – Nov.

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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.

Marta Balaga Dedicated to the events of 2006 in Iraq, “Our River… Our Sky” – previously known as “Another Day in Baghdad” – shows people who suddenly don’t recognize their own country anymore. Trying to carry on with their normal routines, they are “acting life,” says director Maysoon Pachachi.

Marta Balaga One of the biggest issues in the film industry is the lack of standards and protocols surrounding human resources, argued panelists during Sarajevo Film Festival’s “Staying Sane: Mental Health in the Film Industry” panel.

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.

Marta Balaga Sarajevo Film Festival’s CineLink Work in Progress section is about to witness a miracle thanks to Tinatin Kajrishvili’s third feature “Citizen Saint,” about small-town miners suddenly discovering that their protector has literally come down from the cross and into their lives.

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.

Marta Balaga Actor-turned-director Emanuel Pârvu is facing a busy September, heading to Venice Film Festival with Bogdan George Apetri’s “Miracle,” set to premiere in the Horizons section, and then San Sebastian with his own second feature, “Mikado,” chosen for the New Directors showcase.This week, he presents his third project as a director, “Three Miles to the End of the World,” in the CineLink Co-Production Market in Sarajevo, where his 2017 feature debut “Meda or the Not So Bright Side of

Marta Balaga Danish filmmaker Mads Brügger, who won a Sundance best director award for “Cold Case Hammarskjöld,” expected a bigger fallout following the release of his latest film, “The Mole: Undercover in North Korea,” he admitted during his CineLink Talk at Sarajevo Film Festival.His documentary, focusing on two men embarking on a mission to expose the secrets of the Korean Friendship Association (KFA) and its Spanish president, is shown at the festival in the Dealing with the Past section,

Marta Balaga Currently looking for funding and partners to complete post-production, Aida Begić’s fourth feature “A Ballad” is set to take a bow at Sarajevo Film Festival’s CineLink Work in Progress section after picking up the Eurimages Co-production Development Award at the event back in 2015.

It’s been a while since Bono and wife Ali have been on the red carpet but they delighted fans by making a surprise appearance in Sarajevo over the weekend.

Bono delighted fans as he made a surprise appearance as a special guest at the 27th Sarajevo Film Festival in Bosnia on Sunday.  The musician, 61, and his stylish wife Ali Hewson, 60, looked suave in all black for the screening of Wim Wenders’ 2000 film The Million Dollar Hotel.

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,

Marta Balaga Bulgarian director Ralitza Petrova, who won Locarno Film Festival’s Golden Leopard in 2016 with “Godless,” is readying her second feature, “Lust,” which will be presented during Sarajevo Film Festival’s CineLink Co-production Market over the coming week.Produced by Poli Angelova and Petrova for Aporia Filmworks, in collaboration with Screening Emotions, the project has been backed by the Bulgarian National Film Center and Danish Film Institute, with Copenhagen-based Snowglobe on

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

Marta Balaga Heading to the Sarajevo Film Festival to celebrate the world premiere of “The Elegy of Laurel,” Dušan Kasalica is already lining up his next projects. As a director, but also as a producer, developing the upcoming film by Ivan Salatić, “Melting of the Ruler,” set to shoot in 2022.

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.

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.

One of the major highlights of this year’s edition of the Sarajevo Film Festival is the launch of its new TV awards. The festival aims to elevate the visibility of drama series emerging from the former Yugoslavia region with these new Heart of Sarajevo TV Awards and will dish out awards across several categories in the TV arena including Best Drama Series, Best Comedy, Best Series Creator(s), Best Actress, Best Actor and Rising Star.

A total of 47 films will compete at this year’s Sarajevo Film Festival across its four competitive sections. The event will feature 18 world premieres and three international premieres.

Sarajevo Introduces TV AwardThe Sarajevo Film Festival is upping the visibility of TV at its event this year with the introduction of a Heart of Sarajevo prize specifically for series. The Heart of Sarajevo is the fest’s major award and is usually given to the film competition’s winner, with honorary Hearts awarded to filmmakers.

British filmmaker Sacha Gervasi knows his hard rock and metal and where to find the drama within those stories, so perhaps, it’s little surprise he’s teaming up with Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson to co-write a screenplay telling the remarkable story of the concert Dickinson played at the height of The Siege of Sarajevo in 1994.

Naman Ramachandran In today’s Global Bulletin, Adriatic film festivals create online event; Vertigo takes “Censor” for U.K./Ireland distribution; Rankin mentors BBC photography challenge series; Eccho Rights and Lightbox hire and promote staff; and Blue Ant International reveals MipTV slate.The Sarajevo Film Festival, Zagreb Film Festival, Belgrade Film Festival, and Herceg Novi Film Festival have joined hands for an Adriatic regional online film festival.