The film ‘Cinema under Siege’, by director Srdjan Sarenac, is among the recipients of the award for the best project in the selection of the Talent Hub from Central and Eastern Europe at the 2021 Sunny Side of the Doc international marketplace for coproduction in La Rochelle, France.

The film tells the story of a determined group of artists organising the first Sarajevo Film Festival during the siege of Sarajevo in 1993.

“With the film, I want to give an example to people who found themselves in a war zone and show that with the help of culture and films, it is easier to survive the horrors of war, in the same way that we survived the siege of Sarajevo,” Sarenac said.

“This film is a tribute to brave artists led by Haris Pasovic, who organized the first Sarajevo Film Festival in the middle of the war in 1993,” he said.

The film was co-produced by the Association Novi Film (BiH), Novi Film (RS), Metar60 (Croatia) and Al Jazeera Balkans (BiH).

Sunny Side of the Doc is a “major international marketplace for coproduction, buying and selling of high-quality documentary projects, programmes and new narrative experiences.”