Sarajevo 2022

Talents Sarajevo, the prestigious programme of the Sarajevo Film Festival founded in collaboration with Berlin International Film Festival and Berlinale Talents, is inviting applications for its 16th edition. This year the programme will be presented under the title Dis/Content. The closing date for applications is May 31.

Slovak filmmaker Diana Fabiánová’s latest feature doc project ventures into the taboo area of infidelity within a marriage, albeit consensual and designed to shore up the union rather than dismantle it. The film is described as “an intimate probe into society, partnerships, their dark places, and our innermost selves.” The director explains to Business Doc Europe the background to the documentary.

The 18th edition of the Docu Talents from the East, the presentation of top new doc projects from CEE, will take place August 15 during Cinelink Industry Days at the Sarajevo Film Festival. The deadline for submission is May 15. “We are looking forward to this year’s physical event, after holding two previous Docu Talents’ editions online only,” says Marek Hovorka, director of Ji.hlava IDFF which has curated the programme since 2005.

Olha Tsybulska’s debut documentary couldn't be more poignant, comprising a collective portrait of Ukrainians at war. In the film, the director engages in conversation with friends and family, with each interviewee (and the director herself) seeking ways to navigate the new reality of life during wartime. On the eve of Sarajevo 2022 Tsybulska discussed the work with Business Doc Europe.

Ukrainian Alisa Kovalenko’s Expedition 49 and Israeli Renen Schorr’s Rabbi Heller Blues join ten fiction projects in the 2022 Work in Progress selection. The projects will compete for two awards: the Post Republic Award (€40,000 in kind), and the Turkish National Radio Television Award (€25,000 in cash). Plus Sarajevo FF Doc Competition and Docu Talents From the East 2022 selections.

For four years director Dvořáková has followed Marie Tomanova, the Czech-born darling of the New York photography scene, and her partner (both in life and work) Thomas Beachdel, an academic and curator. Produced by Prague-based Evolution Films, the film has HBO Europe on board as a co-producer. Dvořáková talks to Business Doc Europe ahead of the presentation of her project in Sarajevo.

CineLink Talks, the conference arm of CineLink Industry Days (Sarajevo FF), offers a rich programme of masterclasses, debates and seminars, open for all festival and industry guests. Five panels organized in partnership with Documentary Campus will touch upon distribution challenges, new funding strategies for social impact films, middle players in film industry and the responsibility of documentary filmmakers in fake-news era. For all doc-related panels, read on.

A fascinating delve into the lives of traditional Roma families in Romania, The Chalice. Of Sons and Daughters also doubles as an enthralling anthropological exercise tracking the impact that ancient customs have on the lives of young Roma couples and their future offspring.

The annual presentation of docs-in-post from Central and Eastern Europe will take place August 15 during Sarajevo FF. This year nine docs covering a range of geographically diverse topics are up for grabs. “It is surprising that a region often associated primarily with rural films from poor regions can geographically encompass literally the entire world: from Tokyo and Iran to Europe, New York and Salvador,” says Ji.hlava director Marek Hovorka.

Docu Talent of the East awards were handed out August 16 in Sarajevo to the Ukrainian project Dad’s Lullaby and Romanian Between Revolutions. Ji.hlava IDFF also presented the results of this year’s East West Index – an exclusive survey among key European doc film festivals, which focuses on figures representing individual regions. Furthermore, the Czech doc fest announced the 17 Emerging Producers for 2023, plus the guest country of Qatar.