This year's Sarajevo Festival (August 15-23) will be launching its CineLink project which has been inspired by Rotterdam's CineMart.

CineLink is being organised in cooperation with the Rotterdam festival to bring key producers, sales agents and public funders to meet regional filmmakers.

Screenplays from Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Serbia and Montenegro could be entered for the regional script development project by mid-April, and a shortlist of ten or more scripts will be compiled by a pre-selection jury including local industry figures as Macedonia's Goran Stefanovski, Slovenia's Daniel Hocevar and the Czech Republic's Miroslav Mandic by May 25.

A main jury of producers: Cedomir Kolar (4 Productions) and Hashemian Behrooz (Silkroad Productions) and sales agent Philippe Bober (The Coproduction Office) will then select a final five scripts to be given a further polishing at a summer workshop with script doctors before they are pitched at the CineLink market during the festival on August 20-22.

The CineLink project has received support from the Bosnian Federal Government as well as Rotterdam's Hubert Bals Fund and the Dutch foundation HIVOS.

In addition, this year's Sarajevo Film Festival will be dedicating its tribute to a retrospective of films by actor-director Peter Mullan.

Mullan is the third British filmmaker in a row to be invited to Sarajevo for a special showcase following previous tributes for Stephen Frears in 2001 and Mike Leigh last year.

Meanwhile, a further innovation at this year's festival will be the introduction of a sidebar for regional documentaries from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, Romania, Slovenia, Serbia and Montenegro to be programmed by Rada Sesic.