Sarajevo 2025

“Damir Markovina shares his story without reservations,” Croatian producer Tamara Babun Zovko (Wolfgang & Dolly LLC) underlines to BDE of the CineLink Rough Cut presentation We Shall Live Together. In the film, thirty years after the war in the Balkans, two brothers urge their father - former Bosnian Socialist MP Roko Markovina - to return to the place they were exiled from, their divided hometown of Mostar, a city made up of hurt, trauma, and precious memories…

Docu Rough Cut Boutique describes itself as “the leading regional programme for documentaries in post-production coming from Southeast Europe and the Caucuses, famous for its boutique format of only five selected projects.” Created by the Sarajevo Film Festival and Balkan Documentary Center, the programme is organized in three working modules: Sofia (March 2025), Cluj (June 2025) and Sarajevo (August 2025).

Croatian producer Oliver Sertić (Restarted) fills in BDE on Anton Mezulić’s debut feature Cordon, which follows footballer Nikola, the product of a mixed marriage and now approaching manhood, but who is all the while dealing with a chaotic past and an uncertain future. It is a “coming-of-age story of a young man from a small, godforsaken Croatian town that remains ethnically divided thirty years after the war,” says Sertić.

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.

Slow and meditative, at times accompanied by a soundtrack both sinister and rasping, the the Ukrainian feature doc Divia presents an apocalyptic vision of nature destroyed by war. “It’s hard to put some emotions into words, because most of them are inside this project – it’s really personal, and it’s hard to realise how many natural resources have been destroyed, mined, or occupied by Russian military forces,” says director Dmytro Hreshko.

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.

Three documentary projects are selected within this year’s Sarajevo Film Festival CineLink Work-in-Progress programme that showcases “the most compelling new features emerging from Southeast Europe and the MENA region.” New prizes include the HBO Award (€30 000 cash) and the Avanpost Media Award (€30 000 in kind). The 31st Sarajevo FF will be held 15 to 22 August 2025.

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.

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.”

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.