Sarajevo 2025

Ji.hlava IDFF has unveiled the seven projects that will be presented at the 21st edition of Docu Talents from the East 2025, taking place at the Sarajevo Film Festival on August 17. Since 2005, Docu Talents has been a core industry event attended by festival advisors, distributors, buyers, and international journalists, showcasing some of the best documentary projects from the region.

A Song Without Home by Georgian director Rati Tsiteladze, Land of Fire by Czech director Nikola Klinger and Armenian-Swiss co-production Flying Cows by directors Vahagn Khachatryan and Aren Malakyan were announced as Docu Talent Award winners August 18 in Sarajevo. Additionally, Ji.hlava IDFF unveiled its Emerging Producers for 2026, with Sub-Saharan Africa named as Guest Region.

Representatives of Doc Alliance, which unites seven of Europe’s major docfests, will partake in 3 industry panels at this year’s Sarajevo Film Festival, presenting results from the network’s ongoing research project. For several years, the network has been collecting information about all member festivals, “focusing on the key areas of new technologies, inclusive programming, sustainability, emerging talents and educational practices.’ The panels will be held August 18.

Queer artist Ivo Dimchev is a showman, a provocateur and an amazing songwriter, but the prospect of being the focus of Kristina Nikolova’s feature doc wasn’t one that he relished at first. “Many times it was such a nightmare for me and Kristina to deal with it, especially when other people got involved,” he tells BDE. “[But] now it’s over, I have no other feelings than love and gratefulness. What we made is extremely precious to me.”

Docs are squarely in the frame at the 31st Sarajevo Film Festival and its accompanying CineLink Industry Days. Documentary Competition includes 20 feature-length and short films, while the professional programme includes the Docu Rough Cut Boutique and Docu Talents from the East pitch events, the latter organised by Ji.hlava IDFF. Additionally, CineLink Works-in-Progress includes two doc projects. Plus talks and panels. Sarajevo Film Festival kicks off 15 August, running to August 22.

Croatian Dalija Dozet’s father Danko filmed everything, and drove everybody to distraction in the process. He filled over 300 tapes that he never subsequently watched. But his untimely death just after his 55th birthday created a void in his family that could not be filled. Until Dalija decided to assess all the footage he shot, tape by tape. “I wanted to know him more. I wanted to discover him and see who he was. So I just started to watch it,” she tells BDE.

Producer Sonja Bozic discusses the CineLink project The Forbidden Aunt, in which Serbian star actress-turned-filmmaker Bojana Novaković uncovers dark family secrets and confronts her own past in “a darkly comedic, multi-generational portrait of women and trauma.” While the film will address a politically charged topic from a personal perspective, as seen through the lens of lived experience, “humour, soap opera re-enactments, and deeply human moments [will] make the film engaging and accessible,” Bozic tells Business Doc Europe.

HBO’s Hanka Kastelicová and Tereza Bóna Keilová filled in BDE at Sarajevo 2025 on company activities in the CEE region. HBO Max has a huge global footprint, available in around 70 languages and the service continues to open in ever more territories. “One thing that never changes is that HBO is a synonym for quality,” Kastelicová insists to BDE that the company’s rapid growth hasn’t compromised standards.

Romanian filmmaker Laurentiu Garofeanu explains the importance of his feature doc project, pitched at CineLink 2025. In Lost and Found…, when a young Canadian woman, sold as an infant in post-Ceaușescu Romania, returns to reclaim her identity, she uncovers the machinery that trafficked the sister she never knew, one of 30,000 children “exported” for adoption. “The hidden history of Romania’s international adoptions is a wound that never healed, for the children sent abroad, the families left behind, and the country that let it happen,” the director tells BDE.

The Heart of Sarajevo for Best Documentary (€4,000, Oscar® qualifying) went to Austrian Ivette Löcker for Our Time Will Come, while the Special Jury Award (€2,500) was won by Kristina Nikolova for In Hell With Ivo. In the CineLink professional programme, Laurentiu Garofeanu’s LOST AND FOUND: Romania’s Hidden Adoption Market won the Think-Film Impact Production Award (€20,000 in-kind).