Eight festival days, 270 films and nearly 100,000 visitors are the official figures describing the jubilee 25th Sarajevo Film Festival (SFF), which closes the curtains on Friday.
Dubbed as the largest cultural event in the region, the festival awarded the best films and filmmakers in their respective categories with the Heart of Sarajevo in a ceremony held Thursday evening at the Sarajevo National Theatre.
The Best Feature Film of the 25th SFF is drama ‘Take Me Somewhere Nice’ by Bosnia-born Dutch director Ena Serdijarevic.
Mirsad Purivatra, the first person of the festival, said he was happy with the jury's selection.
“Ena is a true talent and part of the SFF story. Five years ago she was in Talent Sarajevo Programme. She was selected and we've been following her work for the past five-six years. She's an exceptional talent. She partly moved to the Netherlands but the film is in our language. It's a fantastic one!,” Purivatra said in N1's special programme dedicated to the SFF.
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“I am particularly happy that this is a young girl who has been part of the festival for five years. It is wonderful to see someone growing up with the festival. We thank Ena and her team for keeping the film since January just to show it here,” he added.
Held under UNESCO patronage this year, SFF hosted many names of the world's film industry, including Tim Roth, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and Pawel Pawlikowski, who were awarded the Honorary Heart of Sarajevo for their special contributions to the art of filmmaking.
“ I always dreamt of coming to Sarajevo and I'm living that dream now,” the famed Mexican filmmaker said upon receiving the award.
According to Purivatra, the screenings were seen by nearly 100,000 guests, which breaks the festival's record. The next edition will aim to increase that number.
“Almost 700 people worked at the festival, plus 300 volunteers. That's nearly one thousand people. We're heading towards the number we keep on mentioning, we almost reached the maximum. Around 100,000 people came to our events, next year I believe we will exceed that number,” he stressed.
The festival which had first started during the siege of Sarajevo in the early 1990s keeps growing every year. One of its goals is to join the network of the world's creative cities and get a more recognised status on the world's map of film.
That's a possibility because, according to David Wilson, Director of Bradford UNESCO City of Film, who visited the Bosnian capital during the festival, “Sarajevo is already a city of film for sure, no doubt about it.”
According to him, the city could be crucial for the development of the creative industry in the region.
“If Sarajevo were to join the UNESCO cities network, it would have access to all of that network across the world, to be able to tell more people like me how fantastic the film festival is but also throughout the year to develop creative industries within this region. And I think Sarajevo could be a key component to the development of creative industries in this area,” WIlson said in an interview with N1.
To make the festival bigger and stable, the Bosnian film industry needs the government's support and additional funding, stressed the Festival Director.
“That would mean that we could have a stable annual production of three to five films and five TV series in the next three to five year period,” said Purivatra.
The work on the next year edition, which will be even better, has already started, he added.
