Sarajevo Film Festival Returns to Form as Launchpad for Local Talent

There’s an air of positivity among Italian film professionals as they head to the Venice Film Festival this year, in spite of the country’s depressed theatrical box office in the wake of Covid and a looming cost of living crisis across Europe.

Julianne Moore dresses up for the Cinema Danieli – An Unforgettable Story inaugural cocktail party with Variety ahead of the 2022 Venice International Film Festival on Tuesday (August 30) in Venice, Italy.

And just like that, summer is over, and the festival season is about to start. That’s right, blockbuster season is essentially over, and now it’s time for the fall film festival circuit to produce and premiere the film titles that will be vying for Oscars later this year.

EXCLUSIVE: The Points North Institute today announced recipients of three of its prestigious fellowship programs, ahead of next month’s Camden International Film Festival in Maine.

Naman Ramachandran The BFI London Film Festival has revealed eight titles that will be in official competition. The films include Santiago Mitre’s political drama “Argentina, 1985” (Argentina); Clement Virgo’s brotherly love tale “Brother” (Canada); Marie Kreutzer’s irreverent period drama “Corsage” (Austria-Luxembourg-Germany-France); Fyzal Boulifa’s atmospheric domestic drama “The Damned Don’t Cry” (France-Belgium-Morocco); Mark Jenkin’s folk horror tale “Enys Men” (U.K.); Hlynur Palmason’s historical epic “Godland” (Denmark-Iceland-France-Sweden); Soudade Kaadan’s poignant family film “Nezouh” (U.K.-Syria-France); and Alice Diop’s courtroom drama “Saint Omer.”

Scottish filmmakers Will Anderson and Ainslie Henderson clinched the Powell And Pressburger Award for best film, the new main competition award at the Edinburgh Film Festival, with their debut feature A Cat Called Dom.

Charlotte Gainsbourg is set to be honored at this year’s Zurich Film Festival with the Golden Eye award. Gainsbourg will be presented with the award on September 26 at the festival and the presentation will be followed by the world premiere of her latest film The Almond and the Seahorse, starring Rebel Wilson.

K.J. Yossman The line-up for Grimmfest’s International Festival of Fantastic Film 2022 edition has been unveiled.“The Loneliest Boy In The World” (U.K.) is set to open the U.K.

Christopher Vourlias Croatian writer-director Juraj Lerotić’s “Safe Place,” an emotional story of a family reeling in the wake of a suicide attempt, took the top prize at the Sarajevo Film Festival, which wrapped a record-setting 2022 edition in the Bosnian capital on Friday night.The Heart of Sarajevo Award for best feature film was given by a jury headed by Austrian filmmaker Sebastian Meise (“The Great Freedom”), which included French filmmaker Lucile Hadžihalilović (“Earwig”), Croatian writer-director Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović (“Murina”), Serbian actor Milan Marić (“Dovlatov”) and Israeli producer and consultant Katriel Schory.“Safe Place” plays on Lerotić’s own pained family history, with the Croatian multihyphenate taking on the lead role in his deeply personal story — a performance that also earned him the award for best actor in Sarajevo. Fresh off a triumphant world premiere in Locarno, where the film won three awards including best first feature, “Safe Place” was described by Variety’s Guy Lodge as a “supremely poised and moving first feature” and a “shattering” debut, “with a long trail of further festival bookings surely ahead.”Ukrainian director Maryina Er Gorbach was named best director for “Klondike,” which portrays the brutal realities of the war unfolding in Ukraine’s Donbass region through the lens of a pregnant farmstead owner whose life and home fall apart.

Eight films battled it out in competition at the 28th Sarajevo Film Festival, but Austrian director Sebastian Meise’s jury—including French director Lucile Hadžihalilović , Croatian director Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović, Serbian actor Milan Marić and Israeli producer Katriel Schory—spread the love quite widely.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefThe Tokyo International Film Festival is to add new venues at this year’s event. It will be the festival’s first-full-scale edition since the COVID pandemic.The festival relocated to the Hibiya-Yurakucho-Ginza area in 2021, having previously operated from the Rpppongi district for many years. It functioned as a real-world event, but had on a few dozen foreign visitors, due to strict border controls.This year, border controls are slowly being lifted and organizers are forecasting an increase in foreign festival guests.

Guy Lodge Film Critic“Rule 34,” a challenging and sexually explicit film from Brazilian director Julia Murat, has emerged as the surprise winner of the Golden Leopard award at this year’s Locarno Film Festival — an edition where typically audacious and formally ambitious work dominated the program.

Christopher Vourlias In some ways it’s a year of transition for the Sarajevo Film Festival, which sees former industry head and co-director Jovan Marjanović take the helm as festival director, while long-time staffer Maša Marković takes over as head of industry. For Marković, who began her career at the long-running Bosnian fest 15 years ago, the change “was kind of organic,” offering the kind of smooth transition that has allowed Sarajevo to retain its position as the leading industry confab in Southeast Europe.For nearly three decades, the festival has identified and launched local talent while serving as a think tank of sorts for the region’s rapidly evolving screen industries.

“Empire of Light,” the latest feature film from Oscar winner Sam Mendes, has locked its European premiere with a gala screening at the 66th annual BFI London Film Festival. Starring Olivia Colman, Michael Ward, Colin Firth, Toby Jones and others, the 1980s–set film “is a powerful and poignant story about human connection and the magic of cinema,” distributor Searchlight Pictures said in a statement. The film’s stars – including Colman, Firth, and on-the-rise BAFTA winner Ward – are expected to be in attendance at the festival’s American Express Gala screening on Oct.

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Rebecca Rubin Film and Media ReporterNew movies from directors Claire Denis, Park Chan-wook, Ruben Östlund, Kelly Reichardt and Paul Schrader will play at the 60th New York Film Festival, which is running from Sept. 30 through Oct.

Mere weeks after winning the Palme d’Or at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival for “The Square,” Swedish auteur Ruben Östlund announced his next project, “Triangle Of Sadness,” and five years later, it won Östlund his second Palme d’Or at Cannes; an exclusive club that puts him in the company of only six other filmmakers in the world. “Triangle Of Sadness” satirizes the elitist world of fashion and completes something of an accidental thematic trilogy, alongside 2014s “Force Majeure” and the aforementioned “The Square” (read our ‘Triangle of Sadness’ review here).

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media ReporterDirector Mary Harron’s “Dalíland,” a movie about influential surrealist artist Salvador Dalí, will have its world premiere as the closing night film for the 47th Toronto International Film Festival.The movie will debut on Saturday, Sept. 17 at Roy Thomson Hall.Ben Kingsley is playing Salvador Dalí in “Dalíland,” which tells the story of his strange and fascinating marriage with his wife Gala as their seemingly unshakeable bond begins to crack.

The Inspection, Elegance Bratton’s narrative feature debut, will close out the 60th New York Film Festival with its U.S. premiere Oct. 14.