Four world premieres in Sarajevo feature competition

The 16^th Sarajevo Film Festival has announced a nine strong feature film competition which includes four world premieres. The next edition runs July 23 to 31.

The world premieres are Inside America by Austrian first-timer Barbara Eder, about crime, drugs and poverty ridden students of a high school in a small town on American-Mexican border;  Bosnia’s Nedzad Begovic feature debut Jasmina, about an infant put in the care of an alcoholic neighbour during the Bosnian war, starring Zijah Sokolovic (The Melon Route) and Nada Djurevska (Grbavica); Jasmin Durakovic’s second film Sevdah For Karim about a philosophy student in post-war Sarajevo who robs a local mosque with two friends on a drunken night; and Tilva Rosh by Serbia’s Nikola Lezaic about two youngsters living in decrepit Serbian town of Bor, once the biggest coal mine in Europe but now in decline following the sanctions of the mid-1990s.

Festival programmer Elma Tataragic said: “The programme consists of nine films from very different authors; different in terms of experience, in terms of their aesthetic approach and in terms of the way they view the world. What they have in common is something very new in regional cinema: intellectual responsibility towards the film, towards the society we more or less share and towards their work, in this case film.”

Other competition titles are Agnes Kocsis’s Adrienn Pal (pictured), winner of FIPRESCI prize in Un Certain Regard, Szabolcs Hajdu’s Bibliotheque Pascal, winner of Golden Reel for best film at the Hungarian Film Week which also screened in the Berlinale Forum, Cannes competition entry Tender Son- The Frankenstein Project by Kornel Mundruczo, and Radu Muntean’s Un Certain Regard title Tuesday, After Christmas.

Mundruczo previously competed in Sarajevo with Delta in 2008 and Johanna in 2005, and Muntean was there with The Paper Will Be Blue in 2006.

Turkey’s Yagmar and Durul Taylan’s fourth film Vavien, a black comedy that delicately tells the story of a small town family, completes the selection.

Inside America, (Austria), Barbara Eder (WP)

Jasmina, (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Nedzad Begovic (WP)

Sevdah For Karim, (B&H/Hungary/Croatia), Jasmin Durakovic (WP)

Tilva Rosh, (Serbia), Nikola Lezaic (WP)

Adrienn Pal, (Hun/Hol/Aut/Fra), Agnes Kocsis

Bibliotheque Pascal, (Hun/Ger/Rom/UK), Szabolcs Hajdu

Tender Son- The Frankenstein Project, (Hun/Ger/Aut), Kornel Mundruczo

Tuesday,After Christmas, (Romania) by Radu Muntean

Vavien, (Turkey) Yagmur Taylan, Durul Taylan

Stanka Goes Home, (Bulgaria),Maya Vitkova

Starting Over, (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Ines Tanovic

3000 Lives Of Butterflies, (Serbia), Sasa Peric

No Sleep Won’t Kill You, (Croatia), Marko Mestrovic

Red,(Croatia, Sonja Tarokic

You’re Out, (Austria), Max Liebich

Derby,(Romania), Paul Negoescu

I Already Am Everything I Want To Have, (Serbia), Dane Komljen

Lord,(Romania), Adrian Sitaru

Yellow Moon,(Croatia), Zvonimir Juric