Sarajevo’s CineLink Unveils Co-Production Market & Drama Sections Lineup Plus New Partnership With Cannes’ Critics’ Week
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- CineLink finalized 16 feature film projects and 8 drama series for its Co-Production Market and Drama sections, with women directing or co-directing 9 of the 16 market titles and 7 of those being debut features, per Head of CineLink Asja Krsmanović.
- CineLink unveiled a new €10,000 cash award from the Kosovo Cinematography Center for one Co-Production Market project, to be presented August 20 — framed by Krsmanović as meaningful support at a time when development financing is increasingly hard to secure.
- CineLink launched the Next Step Studio Participation Award with Cannes' Critics' Week, sending one emerging CineLink director into the program's next edition — which pairs four host-country and four international directors to co-write and co-direct four 15-minute shorts that world-premiere at Critics' Week.
- The exchange runs both ways: CineLink will host one Next Step Studio filmmaker at its Co-Production Market, while the Sarajevo Film Festival will screen shorts created through the program; the inaugural Next Step Studio took place in Indonesia, with its four films premiering at Cannes in May 2026.
- Goran Marković, the Serbian filmmaker behind Yugoslav cinema touchstones "National Class," "Variola Vera," and "Special Education," returns to CineLink+ with a new project.
- The lineup adds Bulgarian returnees Nadejda Koseva ("Fleur de Mar") and Ralitza Petrova ("Peace"), plus two Doha Film Institute guest projects: Aisha Al-Jaidah and Kholood Al-Ali's "The Peacock Queen" and Iraqi writer-director Ahmed Yassin Al-Darraji's "Madness and Honey Days," whose debut "Hanging Gardens" was Iraq's Oscar submission.
- CineLink Industry Days runs August 15-20, 2026, inside the Sarajevo Film Festival, which runs August 14-21.
Why it matters: For debut and emerging filmmakers from Southeast Europe and the wider CineLink orbit, the Next Step Studio exchange opens a direct pipeline to Cannes' Critics' Week — a concrete international stage most first features never reach, and a two-way street that pulls one Next Step director into Sarajevo each cycle. Nine of sixteen Co-Production Market titles being directed or co-directed by women marks one of the more gender-balanced co-production slates on the festival circuit, while the Kosovo Cinematography Center's €10,000 directly addresses the development-financing squeeze Krsmanović flagged.
