Nick Cunningham

Seven highly promising docs from CEE, scheduled for theatrical release over the next 12 months were presented on Sunday August 16 as part of CineLink Industry Days at Sarajevo FF. The Docu Talent Award went to the Luxembourg–Slovak co–production Ora et Labora (pictured) by Dzhovani Gospodinov, while the DAFilms.com VoD distribution Award went to the Slovak project Retuning directed by Sára Prokopová. Ji.hlava IDFF further revealed the professionals for the Emerging Producers programme 2027, and the Guest Country of Ji.hlava IDFF 2026 as Montenegro.

Dublin-based former Yugoslavian filmmaker Dragana Jurišić talks to Business Doc Europe about her debut documentary, a film both joyous and heart-rending, which tells the stories of maverick filmmaker Hari Džekson, a director of westerns, and his home town of Bijeljina, where the war in Bosnia started in 1992. In the feature doc, Jurišić also sets out to create her own western in the style of Hari. “When we were filming, everyone came together - Serbs, Roma, Muslims, Croats. It was such a joyful happy atmosphere, and there was absolutely no reason why these people shouldn't be friends - except for these man-made identity structures that are imposed on them.”

The documentary, which explores the loss of home against the backdrop of the Gaza War, celebrated its world premiere in 2025 in Venice Giornate degli Autori, where it won the Cinema & Art Award. In early 2026, Who Is Still Alive (Qui vit encore) received the Prix de Soleure at the Solothurn Film Festival and was nominated for Best Documentary at the Swiss Film Awards. The film continues to screen at numerous international festivals, most recently in the Panorama Suisse section of the Locarno Film Festival.

In a village on the edge of an expanding coal mine in southwest Turkey, five women – olive farmers and housewives – transform from neighbours into activists in order to protect their forest, the last natural barrier between the mine and their community. "I hope [the film] leaves audiences with the feeling that meaningful change often begins by transforming people long before it transforms the world,” says director Selen Çatalyürekli. The project won the Movies That Matter Award in Sarajevo.

The Pardo d’Oro in the Concorso Cineasti del Presente and the Swatch First Feature Award were both awarded to The Illusion of an Everlasting Summer (La ilusión de un verano sin fin) by Alessandra Sanguinetti. The Grand Prix Semaine de la Critique – Prix SRG SSR went to Blossoming by Kamila Serwicka. Also in Concorso Cineasti del Presente, the Special Jury Prize CINE+OCS was given to Mohanad Yaqubi for Revolutionaries Never Die.

In his new feature doc, world-premiering in Sarajevo, Damir Markovina urges his father, politician Roko Markovina, both to return to the Bosnian city of Mostar from which he exiled himself over 30 years ago, and to acknowledge the repercussions of the personal and political choices and decisions he took back then. “If you don't deal with a problem, your children will have to deal with it, in one way or another,” the director tells BDE.

Seventeen documentary films from across the Nordic region have been selected to compete at this year’s Nordisk Panorama FF (17-22 September 2026). In addition to its strong film programme, the fest will honour, for the fourth consecutive year, the role of the producer, with five producers nominated for the unique Nordic Documentary Producer Award. Nordisk Panorama will open September 17 with Norwegian Guro Saniola Bjerk’s In Cod We Trust.

In her new feature doc, world-premiering at Sarajevo FF, Dutch-based Croatian director Tatjana Bozic discusses the business of loneliness, and being a stranger in a strange land. “It explores the loss of roots, community, and identity through the lens of migration and motherhood. As I discovered while making the film, the feeling of not belonging often begins long before we cross borders, it starts within our own families.”

Jordanian Asmahan Bkerat’s feature doc debut tells of the Afro-Palestinian-Bedouin Najar family living on agricultural land on the outskirts of Amman, the Jordan capital, whose bucolic yet fragile existence is severely threatened by plans to construct modern villas in their immediate vicinity. “I wasn’t a filmmaker before meeting the Najars,” says Bkerat. “This film was born out of the threat they faced, the brutality and destruction of the land, a threat that compelled me to pick up a camera, to document what was left of it and them.”

Seven new major projects from Central and Eastern Europe will be presented August 16 during the 22nd edition of Docu Talents from the East at Sarajevo FF's CineLink Industry Days. All the selected projects are currently in post-production, with premieres expected between September 2026 and August 2027. The most promising projects will be awarded by an international jury and announced during a prize ceremony on August 17.