The 29th Sarajevo Film Festival will open with Kiss the Future film by Nenad Cicin-Sain and Bill Carter, which tells the story about the city under the siege and a post-war U2 concert in the Bosnian capital.

Kiss the Future was produced by Hollywood stars Matt Damon and Ben Affleck for Pearl Street Films and Sarah Anthony for Good Wolves Productions.

“This inescapably current story of defiance amid the Siege of Sarajevo in the 1990s follows an underground community that uses music and art to effect change and garner global attention, and the tale of a post-war concert by U2 that celebrates the city’s hard-fought triumph over ethnic nationalism,” the SFF management wrote for the film description.

Kiss the Future depicts the experiences of this extraordinary community who continued to work, create, and live in the city throughout the siege. As the blockade stretches on for years, living becomes an act of defiance, and rock and punk music inspires and detracts from the daily nightmare of shells and snipers.

Bill Carter was an American aid worker living in Sarajevo and, inspired by this local resistance, he reached out to one of the world's biggest bands, U2, to see if they could help raise global awareness of the devastating conflict. The band agreed and across the summer of 1993, their ZOO TV featured live satellite interviews with local Sarajevans. When these interviews came to an end, the band pledged to perform in the city once the conflict was over.

Kiss the Future follows the story of this promise and the post-war concert in which U2 performed in front of more than 45,000 fans in the liberated city. This concert is still a collective memory for the people of Sarajevo, as proof that they not only survived the siege, but also that in the midst of the horrors produced by the darkest impulses, music and art can be acts of rebellion and resistance.

“On 23rd September 1997, U2 performed to 45,000 fans at Kosevo Stadium, with the support acts including Bosnian groups Gazi Husrev-beg choir, Protest, and Sikter. Held around two years after the siege ended, it was a moment to show that this city had not been beaten. Once again, people were standing and living side by side. One people singing with one voice”, said film director Nenad Cicin-Sain.

One of the producers, Matt Damon, said that “it’s about how it’s an act of protest, an act of resistance, to make art.”

“And that’s what it is to be alive. The idea that these people were risking their lives to go play music together, and that people were risking their lives to come hear them play and maintain that sense of community. It’s really, really powerful stuff,” he added.

The film features Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton, Bill Clinton, Christiane Amanpour, Mirsad Purivatra, Vesna Andree Zaimovic, Senad Zaimovic, Enes Zlatar, Alma Catal Hurem, Boris Siber and Srdjan Gino Jevdjevic.

Kiss the Future will be screened as part of the Open Air programme.

This documentary premiered as a Special Gala presentation at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2023. It was also screened at the opening of this years Tribeca Festival in New York.