Each year since 2005, Sarajevo Film Festival and Ji.hlava IDFF have organised the Docu Talents from the East presentation of the region’s “most remarkable” documentary projects. This year’s presentation of seven projects will take place August 17 during Cinelink Industry Day.
Directors and producers of the selected projects will be granted industry accreditations to the Sarajevo Film Festival and two nights of accommodation. The deadline for submission of projects is May 31.
“We look for the most remarkable projects in post-production from across Central and East Europe, which includes the Balkans and post-Soviet republics,” the festival writes.
The main prize, the Docu Talent Award is given to the most promising project. Last year this was presented to Lithuanian-German-Latvian co-production Baltic UXO by directors Agnė Dovydaitytė and Alexander Belinski, produced by Dagnė Vildžiūnaitė.
A new award in 2025 will be presented by Romanian company Avanpost who will provide “in-kind” post-production services (€25,000) to one of the projects.
The third award will be the in-kind DAFilms.com Distribution Award (covering international VOD release on DAFilms.com – including Americas, Europe, Asia) for two years. The prize is worth €3,000. In 2024, this was awarded to The Big Chief by Polish director Tomasz Wolski, produced by Anna Gawlita.
Successful projects presented at Docu Talents in the past are Academy Award nominees Rabbit a la Berlin by Bartosz Konopka and Honeyland by Tamara Kotevska and Ljubomir Stefanov.
Numerous past projects have fared well at major festivals and markets, such as the recent A Picture to Remember by Olga Chernykh with opened IDFA in 2023 and won best doc at Sarajevo FF; and KIX by Bálint Révész & Dávid Mikulán which won awards at Transilvania International Film Festival, Movies That Matter, Camden International Film Festival, ZagrebDox and MakeDox.
