Participants in Sarajevo Film Festival’s CineLink workshop for projects in development and its new Producers’ Lab, benefited from practical and long-term strategic advice from top industry figures at Slano Film Days, the mentoring and development lab that took place in Croatia last week.
For the first time, six emerging producers with newly established companies in the Balkan region selected for the Sarajevo Film Festival’s year-long CineLink Producers’ Lab, were invited to Slano.
“Slano gives producers the chance to talk to big directors and producers one-to-one,” said Ukrainian producer and Lab participant Inna Lastochkina after meeting with industry execs including Swedish outfit Platform Produktion’s Erik Hemmendorff, producer of two Palme d’Or-winning films. “It is how you establish your industry circle, from these kinds of small markets when you really have time to talk.”
Lastochkina was attending Slano after launching her production company, Lito Film, with director Olha Zhurba in Kyiv last month. Their development slate includes new features with Kyrylo Zemlyanyim, whose short film, Unavailable, screened in Venice last year, and with Zhurba
“It is very rarely producers get the opportunity to talk about themselves, their struggles and where they are,” said Lastochkina of what Slano gave her. “It was quite intense, a lot of talking, a lot of listening. But for young producers, it is an amazing opportunity.”
She said the intimate event helps prepare the producers for much bigger events such as Sarajevo and Cannes.
Another Cinelink Producers’ Lab attendee in Slano was producer Ana Martinović, of Nukleus Film in Croatia.
“All the people we’ve met, colleagues and professionals from the industry, were very open,” she says of the Slano crowd. “It’s really a very tight community and safe space to bring problems we are facing and have an honest conversation. People dedicate time to talk to you.
“It’s reassuring to learn [there is] constant change and that it’s a constant learning process for everyone in the business.”
Martinović is developing a feature with Jozo Schmuch, the rising director whose short Shallow Ground played at the Zagreb Film Festival last year.
The other four producers in the lab at Slano were Iriana Adnana (4 Proof Film, Romania), Dragana Antić (This and That, Serbia), Durna Safarova (Etudfilm, Azerbaijan), and Sergiu Scobioala (Realitatea Film, Romania).
Additionally, the creative teams from three projects from the CineLink programne of the Sarajevo Film Festival were selected to pitch their projects to international industry executives and mentors.
Serbian directors Mladen Kovačević’s Koryo and Nađa Petrović’s debut feature Jellyfish Live Forever Until They Are Caught, and Slovenian director Urška Djukić’s Forbidden Fruit took part in the five-day intensive mentoring programme.
Jellyfish Live Forever Until They’re Caught was one of the buzz projects in Slano. Petrovic is adapting her own novel, about an introverted teenage girl who is scared she will die on her 19th birthday, in development with Katarina Prpić at Croatian outfit Antitalent, who discovered the novel when it was first pitched at CineLink Books in Sarajevo in 2024.
Petrović also won a Heart Of Sarajevo award for best student film for her short, The Smell Of Fresh Paint.
In Slano, Prpić and Petrović met with script consultants, sales agents and producers. One challenge was to pitch the project in “three condensed sentences”.
It is being structured as a Serbia-Croatia coproduction, and already has development support. “We are in the process of writing,” Prpić says. ”It is logical to come here because what we need is script consultancy. We had wonderful meetings about story and character. It’s the right time to talk about everything.”
In August, they will head to Sarajevo where they hope to meet potential coproducers and other collaborators.
Meanwhile, Kovačević’s Koryo is a sci-fi drama blending documentary and historical speculation that is being produced through Belgrade-based Horopter, and Djukić’s Forbidden Fruit, is a drama set during the Black Death that is being made by Slovenian outfit Oink!
The Slano attendees will now take part in CineLink Industry Days at the Sarajevo Film Festival from August 15-20.
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