The first Sarajevo Film Festival was held from October 25 to November 5, 1995. It took place during the siege of Sarajevo that had begun in April 1992. Because of the ongoing hostilities, the organizers didn’t expect the festival to attract many attendees. However, a surprising 15,000 cinema lovers turned up to see what the festival had to offer. They were treated to a program of 37 films from 15 countries.
Since its inception, the Sarajevo Film Festival has become one of the largest events of its kind in Europe, with an annual attendance of over 100,000. It screens over a hundred feature-length and short films from 60 countries each year. The festival has been attended by internationally renowned actors and filmmakers such as Benicio del Toro, Kevin Spacey, Gillian Anderson, Darren Aronofsky, Mickey Rourke, Jeremy Irons, Michael Fassbender, Steve Buscemi, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovch, Robert De Niro and others.
The main venue of the Sarajevo Film Festival is the National Theater in downtown Sarajevo. Festival screenings are held at several venues across the city, including the Metalac open-air theater, the Bosnian Cultural Center, and a number of other cinemas and projection locations.
In 2001, the European Film Academy put the Sarajevo Film Festival on the list of festivals that could nominate a film for the European Film Award for Best Short Film. Later that same year, the winner of the Sarajevo Film Festival, No Man’s Land by Danis Tanović, won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
The program of the Sarajevo Film Festival includes competition screenings (features, shorts and documentaries) and a series of non-competition sections such as In Focus, Kinoscope, Tribute To, Open Air, Summer Screen, European Shorts, Children’s Program, TeenArena, Avant Premieres, Operation Kino, Dealing with the Past, and Human Rights Day. The highest prize awarded in all competition categories is the Heart of Sarajevo (Srce Sarajeva). The current design of the award was introduced in 2004.
Photo: sff.ba
