Sarajevo CineLink Sets Lineup, Partners with Critics' Week
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- CineLink completed its Co-Production Market (16 features) and Drama (8 series) selections, with women directing or co-directing 9 of the 16 feature projects and 7 of the titles being debut features.
- Returning Bulgarian filmmakers Nadejda Koseva ("Fleur de Sel") and Ralitza Petrova ("Peace") both previously developed earlier films through CineLink — Petrova's debut "Godless" went through in 2015 and went on to win Locarno's Golden Leopard.
- Two guest projects arrive via Doha Film Institute collaboration: Qatari animation "The Peacock Queen" from duo Aisha Al-Jaidah and Kholood Al-Ali, and Iraqi director Ahmed Yassin Al-Darraji's "Madness and Honey Days," about a theater actor exiled to a psychiatric hospital in Saddam's final months.
- Serbian filmmaker Goran Marković, whose "National Class," "Variola Vera" and "Special Education" are defining Yugoslav cinema works, presents "Fritz and Dobrila" through the CineLink+ strand.
- The Kosovo Cinematography Center is launching a new €10,000 ($11,400) cash award for one Co-Production Market project, to be presented at the CineLink Awards Ceremony on Aug. 20.
- Under the new Cannes Critics' Week partnership, one CineLink-selected emerging director will join Next Step Studio's 2027 edition in Armenia, with reciprocal exchange bringing a Next Step filmmaker to Sarajevo's Co-Production Market.
Why it matters: CineLink head Asja Krsmanović explicitly framed the lineup against a backdrop where "development financing is increasingly difficult to secure" — making the fresh €10,000 Kosovo award and the Critics' Week bridge concrete, not symbolic, wins for the 16 features (nine directed by women). For Southeast European first-time filmmakers, the Next Step Studio exchange formalizes a pipeline to Cannes that previously ran on informal relationships.
