Sarajevo Film Festival reveals 2026 competition lineup with 21 world premieres

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Sarajevo Film Festival reveals 2026 competition lineup with 21 world premieres

Developed over time first seen 2 months ago

Variety · 2 months ago

The Sarajevo Film Festival has announced the competition line-ups for its 32nd edition, highlighting new work from South-East European filmmakers. The programme includes 21 world premieres, underlining the festival’s role as a major platform for cinema from the region when it runs from 14 to 21 August.

Across four competition sections, the festival will also host six international premieres, one European premiere and 23 regional premieres. Its narrative feature competition contains nine films, including six directed by women, with selections ranging from family dramas and coming-of-age stories to social realism; notable titles include Urša Menart’s “Everything That’s Wrong With You” and Zvonimir Jurić’s “Small Things”.

  • Sarajevo announces 2026 competition programmes
  • Line-up includes 21 world premieres
  • Festival runs from 14 to 21 August

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Sarajevo Film Festival is one of the most important film events in South-East Europe, held each August in Bosnia and Herzegovina's capital. It began in the 1990s during the Bosnian War as a way of keeping cultural life going under siege, and has since grown into the region's leading showcase for new cinema, drawing filmmakers and audiences from across the Balkans and beyond.

Each year the festival runs several competition sections for different types of film, including feature-length dramas, documentaries and shorts. Films entered are typically labelled by how new they are to audiences: a "world premiere" means the film has never been shown publicly anywhere before, while "international", "European" or "regional" premieres indicate it has already screened elsewhere but is new to that particular audience.

The festival's selections are widely watched by people in the film industry because they offer an early signal of which directors and stories from South-East Europe are gaining attention, often before those films reach wider international audiences or other major festivals.

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Originally published by Variety as “Sarajevo Film Festival Unveils Competition Programs With 21 World Premieres, Six International Premieres”.