Films by Julian Schnabel (Before Night Falls), Joel Coen (The Man Who Wasn't There) and Jafar Panahi (The Circle) are among the films screening in the Panorama sidebar of this year's Sarajevo Film Festival which opens on August 17 with an open-air screening of Cannes prize-winner No Man's Land.

Other Panorama films include Arturo Ripstein's Such Is Life, Wen Jiang' Devils On The Doorstep and Michael Cuesta's L.I.E., while the New Currents programme of first and second feature films will feature eight works including Uli M. Schueppel's Planet Alex, Joao Pedro's The Ghost, Babak Payami's One More Day and Andrew Dominik's Chopper.

The inaugural New Currents programme will showcase short fiction and experimental films - ranging from Michel Leclerc's Le Poteau Rose through Ruth Mader's Null Defizit to Patrick Jolly's Seven Days 'Till Sunday and Duane Hopkins' Field - which will compete for the Prix UIP Sarajevo - the winning film going on to compete in the 2001 European Film Awards.

Sarajevo is one of 12 European festivals, including the Berlinale, Tampere Short Film Festival and the Regus London Film Festival nominating shorts for this award which will presented in Berlin with a money prize of Euros 10,000 on December 1.

In addition, this year' festival will showcase the latest feature films to come out of the Balkans region in the Regional Programme, including Faruk Sokolovic's Milky Way (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Vlasil Hristov's The Letter (Macedonia), Harry Rag's Glazier Blues (Slovenia), Ljubisa Samardzic's Natasha (Yugoslavia) and Stefan Komanderev's Dog's Home (Bulgaria).