Screen profiles the producers and directors making waves with their next feature projects, which are being showcased in the various programmes of Sarajevo’s CineLink Industry Days this week.
Rita Balogh, Hungary (director-producer)
Hungarian director-producer Rita Balogh is attending Docu Rough Cut Boutique with her second feature documentary, Kind Of Adults, co-directed with her partner Peter Akar, through her company Other Films, with Germany’s Treibsend Film.
The film blends self-shot and observational footage of a group of Gen Z teens, capturing identity crises, depression, and fleeting joy in a fast-changing world.
“We hope young audiences will recognise themselves in the film,” says Balogh. “We want the film to remind them that they are not navigating these years alone.”
Emilija Gašić, Serbia (director)
Gašić’s feature debut, 78 Days, was a hit on the 2024 festival circuit. She is now at the CineLink CoProduction Market with the folk horror Wolf Days, about a middle-aged woman in a fraught marriage with a urologist obsessed with tracking a wolf, who turns to a healer who drives her to the edge of madness.
“This film seeks to uncover and challenge the taboos surrounding women’s health and to expose the power imbalances that define both medical and personal relationships,” says Gašić. ” The story confronts toxic masculinity, showing how cycles of control and silence can be broken.”
Co-produced by Serbia’s Non-Aligned Films, Gašić’s US-based company Istok, and Croatia’s Restart, the project is in development and took part in Torino Film Lab in 2025.
Azer Guliev. Azerbaijan (director)
Building on the promise of his short film Sanki Yoxsan, selected for the short film competition at Cannes 2024, Guliev is at CineLink Co-production Market with his first feature, The Metallic Sky Of Saturn.
Set in the late 1990s, he is developing the story of a young woman searching for her brother, lost in the war. Her path leads her to a former prisoner who is mistaken for a war hero, and together they craft a fiction that blurs the boundaries between grief, memory, and identity.
The project is a co-production between Azerbaijan’s Empty Plate Films and France’s La Luna.
“Within the framework of a modern reality steeped in archaic traditions, the film navigates a journey where the lowliest aspects of life are transformed into moments of absolute, magical realism,” says the director.
Ishak Jalimam, Bosnia-Herzegovina (producer)
Jalimam is participating in CineLink Drama as the producer, with Lara Grozdanić, of the six-part series Hedgehogs In The Haze.
The comedy-drama is about three women navigating financial struggles and an unexpected entanglement with the criminal underworld. Actors Džana Pinjo and Ermin Bravo have crafted the storyline under the mentorship of Danis Tanović, who is attached to direct with Nermin Hamzagić.
“This portrayal of strong female friendships among women in their 40s is a narrative strand rarely seen in the Bosnian market,” says Jalimam, who is now raising the financing, with Bosnia’s Realstage, Serbia’s Brand Vision, Bulgaria’s Agitprop, and Norway’s Para Film & Theatre.
Nina Kusturica, Austria (director)
Bosnia-born, Austria-based Kusturica (unrelated to Emir) is at CineLink Works in Progress with her fourth film, the essay documentary Marienhof, in production with Nikolaus Geyrhalter Filmproduktion.
The film portrays the events surrounding the sale of their family apartment in Sarajevo that challenge Kusturica and her mother, who fled to Vienna 30 years ago, and her daughter to redefine the question of belonging.
“My image of Sarajevo is deeply anchored in the past, while the city has undergone its own transformations,” says Kusturica. “My mother and I move within it as people who were once part of it and who now stand partly outside.”
The filmmaker’s credits include narrative features Auswege (2003) and Ciao Cherie (2017), and documentary Little Alien (2009).
Elene Mikaberidze, Georgia (director)
Following her 2024 documentary Blueberry Dreams, Mikaberidze is at CineLink Co-production Market with her first fiction feature, The Taste Of The Peach.
The project is about a woman who opens a guest house in her grandmother’s native Abkhazia that becomes a haven for Georgians, Ukrainian refugees fleeing the war, and Russians escaping mobilisation.
It is being produced by North Macedonia’s Sisters and Brother Mitevski, Belgium’s Entre Chien et Loup and Georgia’s Takes Film and Nushi Film, with support from the Hubert Bals Fund and Belgium Film Fund.
“I wanted to embrace the tragicomic spirit I found among the people living there, whose humour became a way to endure the absurdity of everyday life,” says Mikaberidze.
Filip Mojzeš, Croatia (director)
A Sarajevo regular with his short films, Mojzeš is at CineLink Works in Progress with his first feature, The First Week Of August. The co-production between Croatia’s Wolfgang & Dolly and Poland’s Photon Film was selected for the Les Arcs Works in Progress showcase and won the first prize in Pula Film Festival’s Pro section.
The family drama centres around the summer vacation of a middle-class couple and an unexpected and violent attack on the 10-year-old son by the mother. The holiday turns into a battlefield of repressed tensions, unspoken frustrations, and unresolved trauma.
Mojzeš says he worked closely with actress Ivana Roščić on the character and cites Lucrecia Martel’s The Headless Woman and John Cassavetes’ A Woman Under The Influence as inspirations.
“I wanted the protagonist’s backstory to remain unknown, allowing the central character to function as a kind of enigma,” he says.
Kan Muftić, Bosnia-Herzegovina (director)
Muftić started out directing commercials and music videos in Switzerland before establishing a career in the UK as a concept artist for features and games, working for the likes of Ridley Scott, Andy Serkis, and Robert Zemeckis.
He is at the CineLink Co-production Market with his first feature, With Blessings On Your Way, a co-production between the UK’s Snafu Pictures and Bosnia’s SCCA/pro.ba, now in financing.
The horror drama follows a shepherd in the Bosnian mountains, whose world unravels when he disturbs a hornets’ nest and the villagers claim he has awakened the mythical Dragon.
“Drawing on my experience of war and Bosnian folk tales, With Blessings On Your Way explores trauma through magical realism, transforming psychological wounds into a haunting fable,” says the director, who plans to shoot the film on Super 16.
Grega Švabič, Slovenia (director)
Švabič worked as sound recordist and designer for 20 years before embarking on his first project as writer and creator, the eight-part series Chain Reaction, which is at CineLink Drama.
The action thriller follows an 18-year-old snowboarder fighting for a spot in the European Championship, as he teams up with his crew to expose a corporate nuclear conspiracy buried beneath their Alpine resort town
“I see Chain Reaction as a journey from youthful carefreeness to the brutal realisation that the very foundations of ‘home’ are poisoned,” says Švabič of the series, a coproduction between Slovenia’s E-75 and Italy’s Staragar.
Čarna Vučinić, Serbia (producer)
The prolific Vučinić is at Sarajevo this week with Filip Grujić and Aleksa Borković’s documentary Yugo Goes To America, screening out of competition in the festival and two projects in the CineLink Co-production Market: Koryo, the first fiction feature by acclaimed documentary filmmaker Mladen Kovačević, and Goran Marković’s Fritz & Dobrila.
Koryo, produced by Vučinić for Horopter and co-produced by Croatia’s Eclectica and Slovenia’s Vertigo, blends drama, historical speculation and science fiction. The project won the Marche du Film award at When East Meets West.
Fritz & Dobrila, produced with Ena Barjakterević and Stefan Ivančić through Naked, follows a couple and their son who survive on Swiss disability pensions in a Belgrade apartment. Without ever stepping into the outside world, they face the absurdities of Balkan socio-politics.
“Being an independent filmmaker in Serbia has never been more challenging,” says Vučinić, who also produced Tamara Todorović’s Nobody Said Anything, which is screening in the short film competition, after debuting at Cannes in May.
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