Wolf Days, First Week of August Top Sarajevo CineLink
Get the Culture newsletter
Daily culture — film, music, books, the trends and ideas worth your attention. Free.
- Wolf Days by Emilija Gašić won the Eurimages Co-Production Development Award (€20,000/$23,000); it's a folk horror about a woman facing menopause who turns to a folk healer and is driven "to the edge of madness in search of her own liberation," per the director.
- Mamayi from Ukrainian writer-director Oleksandr Roshchyn won the Eurimages Special Co-Production Development Award (€20,000); set in 2009, it follows two TV reporters forced into a dirty election campaign for a pro-Russian candidate.
- The First Week of August by Filip Mojžeš won the HBO Award (€30,000/$35,000) in the Works in Progress strand — a family drama about a mother's sudden physical outburst toward her 10-year-old son during an island vacation.
- The White Week by Bojan Vuletić received the Post Republic Award (€30,000 in post-production services) for a film about an 11-year-old boy who exploits his brother's tragic death to expose hypocrisy and corruption in his community.
- Pay the Bill from Kazakh director Assel Aushakimova won the Avanpost Media Award (€30,000 in post-production services), following a 65-year-old woman plunged into indifference while searching for her daughter after a late-night police call.
- The Female Voices CineLink Award (€20,000, partnered with the Slovenian Film Center and the UN in Bosnia and Herzegovina) went to horror-comedy series "Little Yugoslavia" from creators Teona Strugar Mitevska and Sonja Prosenc.
- The Sarajevo Film Festival runs Aug. 14–21, with additional CineLink prizes going to "The Taste of the Peach," "How to Disappear in the Lake," "Forbidden Fruit," "You Can Always Come Back," and political thriller series "Stringers."
Why it matters: These €20,000–€35,000 cash and post-production prizes function as concrete finishing funds for emerging regional cinema from Southeast Europe, the MENA region, and Central Asia — and the slate signals what festival programmers want greenlit, including a Ukrainian film (Roshchyn's "Mamayi") about journalists navigating a pro-Russian election campaign, a notable choice given the current war.
Ask SkimNews
