Sarajevo Film Festival opens Friday with Pawlikowski's 'Fatherland'

''Fatherland'' will be screened simultaneously at several festival venues. At the same time, the honor of hosting the Sarajevo Film Festival opening ceremony traditionally goes to a young acting star from Bosnia and Herzegovina. This year, that role will be taken by Kerim Cutuna.

At the Festival’s opening screening, audiences will be greeted by director Pawlikowski, who completes his Cold War trilogy with this film.

The film had its world premiere at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, where Pawlikowski won the Best Director award.

The historical drama ''Fatherland'' focuses on the relationship between Nobel laureate Thomas Mann (Hanns Zischler) and his daughter Erika (Sandra Hüller), an actress, writer and race car driver. In the summer of 1949, at the height of the Cold War, father and daughter embark on a demanding and emotional journey in a black Buick through war-ravaged Germany, from American-controlled Frankfurt to Soviet-controlled Weimar. Returning home after 16 years of exile in the United States, Thomas Mann must confront not only a divided homeland but also a deep rift within his own family.

Pawlikowski’s 2013 film ''Ida'' won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, becoming the first Polish film to receive the award. It also won five European Film Awards.

This year’s festival competition for the Sarajevo Film Festival's Heart of Sarajevo awards features four sections: feature fiction, feature-length and short documentaries, short fiction and student short films. Of the films selected, 21 will have their world premieres, 6 their international premieres, 1 its European premiere, and 23 their regional premieres, while 1 film screening out of competition will have its Bosnia and Herzegovina premiere.

Sarajevo Film Festival Director Jovan Marjanovic previously said this year’s Competition selection is not merely a showcase of the best new films, but also a look at the future of regional cinema.

''The films we are presenting this year testify to the creative courage of filmmakers, the diversity of cinematic approaches and the high artistic level of production in Southeast Europe. I am confident that this selection will be a valuable experience both for audiences and for the many film professionals who will gather in Sarajevo in August,'' Marjanovic said.

Elma Tataragic, selector of the Competition – Feature Film section, has selected nine films, including one world premiere, one international premiere, one European premiere and six regional premieres.

''The program consists primarily of second and third feature films by their directors, alongside one debut and two fifth feature films, demonstrating both the emergence of new filmmaking voices and the continued creative development of established directors. Together, these nine films offer a rich panorama of contemporary regional cinema — from intimate family dramas and coming-of-age stories to social realism and formally bold auteur works. The fact that six of the nine films were directed by women speaks not only to the artistic diversity of this year’s program, but also to the increasingly strong and diverse voices shaping the future of regional cinema,'' Tataragic said of this year’s selection.

In addition to its rich film program, this year’s Sarajevo Film Festival will feature a wide range of accompanying events, particularly music events, which will transform Sarajevo into a true cultural hub and offer tourists entertainment to suit every taste.