Sarajevo Fest Unveils Lineup: 21 World Premieres
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- Sarajevo Film Festival unveiled lineups for four competition sections on Thursday, including 21 world premieres, six international premieres, one European premiere, and 23 regional premieres; the 32nd edition runs Aug. 14–21.
- Elma Tataragić, programmer of the narrative feature section, said the selection is dominated by second and third features, with six of nine films directed by women, spanning family dramas, coming-of-age stories, social realism, and formally adventurous works.
- The narrative feature competition draws exclusively from South-East Europe, including Urša Menart's "Everything That's Wrong With You" (Slovenia, world premiere), Dina Duma's "Skateboarding Is Not for Girls" (North Macedonia, European premiere), and Florin Șerban's "You Don't Belong Here" (Romania, regional premiere).
- The documentary feature competition includes 13 films, notably Morteza Atabaki's "32 Meters" (Türkiye, Iran, Qatar) and Helena Maksyom's Ukraine-co-produced "Don't Ask Me If I Killed."
- The festival also unveiled a documentary shorts slate of eight films and a student short film competition of 11 entries, plus "Yugo Goes America" as an out-of-competition national premiere.
Why it matters: As the premier launchpad for South-East European cinema, the Sarajevo slate shapes which regional films surface internationally before the Venice/Toronto fall calendar — and with six of nine narrative features directed by women, this is among the most female-led major European competition lineups, amplifying new voices from a region still rebuilding its post-Yugoslav cinematic infrastructure.
