It’s a welcome sight for any longtime guests returning to Sarajevo, the white-jacketed waiters circling the terrace of the majestic, Austro-Hungarian-built Hotel Europe as movie and TV trade professionals parse scripts and shut offers amid the espresso-fueled chatter. Around them a haze of cigarette smoke hovers just like the mist that settles every morning over the inexperienced hills that ring this scenic Bosnian metropolis.
Each summer time tons of of trade friends from across the globe descend on the historic, 140-year-old Hotel Europe, which survived two World Wars and the shelling that razed Sarajevo within the Nineties and serves because the de facto hub of trade occasions in the course of the Sarajevo Film Festival. Twenty years after its launch in a metropolis nonetheless rising from the rubble of a brutal, four-year siege, CineLink Industry Days has grown into the main movie and TV trade occasion within the Balkan area — successful story as inconceivable because the resilience of the lodge and the rebirth of Sarajevo itself.
Maša Marković, who took over because the pageant’s head of trade final yr, says the occasion has change into a vital pipeline for rising skills within the area, describing it as a “generator” for “younger, upcoming generations” of filmmakers who typically reduce their tooth in Sarajevo’s improvement labs earlier than later strolling the pageant’s crimson carpet to premiere their first movies.
To obtain that purpose, CineLink Industry Days has broadened its actions past the annual year-round occasion held in the course of the Sarajevo Film Festival. The CineLink Co-Production Market, one of many main co-production and co-financing platforms within the area, hosts an internet workshop in June to assist members put together for his or her Sarajevo pitches. Script docs seek the advice of with members of the CineLink Drama TV discussion board within the run-up to the August occasion.
Then there’s the Ponta Lopud Festival, held every summer time on a small island off the coast of Croatia, the place Sarajevo pageant founder Mirsad Purivatra two years in the past established a artistic hub that brings collectively rising filmmakers from the area with heavyweights of world cinema, corresponding to Oscar winners Frances McDormand and Joel Coen two-time Cannes Palme d’Or winner Ruben Östlund.
Collectively, these actions have ensured that CineLink stays “a platform that actually fosters and nurtures younger rising professionals all throughout the [value] chain,” says Marković. “This actually permits us to…cater to the wants of the tasks all year long.”
To gauge the success of the pageant’s trade platform, she says to look no additional than the amount and high quality of titles it’s helped launch, corresponding to László Nemes’ Academy Award winner “Son of Saul,” Adina Pintilie’s Golden Bear winner “Touch Me Not” and Tamara Kotevska and Ljubomir Stefanov’s Oscar nominee “Honeyland.”
Eleven movies celebrating world or regional premieres at this yr’s Sarajevo Film Festival are alumni of its numerous trade strands; members finally yr’s works-in-progress occasion included final month’s Karlovy Vary winner “Blaga’s Lessons” (pictured, high), by Stephan Komandarev; Tribeca worldwide narrative competitors choice “The Future,” by Noam Kaplan; and a trio of movies set to premiere at subsequent month’s Venice Film Festival, together with Horizons picks “Hesitation Wound,” by Selman Nacar, and “Dormitory,” by Nehir Tuna, in addition to Venice Days title “Backstage,” by Afef Ben Mahmoud and Khalil Benkirane.
Marković credit the “curational method” behind the occasion’s choice course of, guaranteeing that “the eyes of decisionmakers” are targeted not on the excessive quantity of tasks — simply 11 have been chosen for this yr’s co-production market — however on the standard of people who have made the reduce. The “driving power” of CineLink Industry Days stays its means to find and nurture rising skills and current them to the trade friends who make the journey to the Bosnian capital every summer time.
Sarajevo Film Festival
Upwards of 1,000 accredited trade friends will arrive in Sarajevo this week, with roughly 150 overseas producers, funders, gross sales brokers and pageant reps from greater than 40 nations available for the pageant’s long-running co-pro market. Executives from Mubi and Fremantle are among the many high-profile members anticipated to attend, together with reps from festivals together with Cannes, Venice, Berlin, Sundance, Tribeca, Toronto and SXSW.
After recording a 20% spike in first-time attendees final yr, Marković expects an identical bump this week — not solely amongst overseas executives trying to uncover new expertise, however amongst filmmakers from throughout the Balkans and the broader area hoping to faucet into the skilled community that has grown across the annual occasion.
That’s partly by design, she says, pointing to the launch final yr of the CineLink Producers’ Lab, a networking and coaching program for 12 early-career producers from the area. “We actually foster newcomers to return, not solely from the decision-maker facet, however completely, within the first place, we additionally must be a house for the folks which are growing the content material,” she says.
Recent years have seen a “large shift” within the native market, says Marković, pushed partially by a increase in tv manufacturing. It’s hardly a coincidence that Bosnia’s most celebrated filmmakers — Oscar winner Danis Tanović (“No Man’s Land”) and nominee Jasmila Žbanić (“Quo Vadis, Aida?”) — are each bowing new collection this yr, with the previous unveiling the dramedy “Frust” as a part of Sarajevo’s Avant Premiere Series strand and the latter debuting her drama collection “I Know Your Soul” Out of Competition on the Venice Film Festival.
“I Know Your Soul,” from Oscar nominee Jasmila Žbanić, premieres on the Venice Film Festival.
Courtesy of Deblokada for BH Content Lab
Once once more, the Sarajevo Film Festival was forward of the curve, launching a devoted drama strand seven years in the past. “People have been actually stunned with our logic to start out doing a improvement workshop for drama collection within the area when there was no cash for TV collection in any respect,” says Marković. CineLink Drama, nevertheless, anticipated the necessity for native creatives to develop a brand new talent set to adapt to the burgeoning medium.
“We knew that we had nice skills, however these skills would wish, as soon as the cash comes — and we knew the cash would come — they wanted to know what the brand new craft is,” she continues. “That’s the rationale that drama is central [in Sarajevo]. This is the demand of the market. This is one thing that individuals want to grasp — what are the modifications and what are the challenges.”
Marković however sees a gradual decline within the variety of collection being produced in a regional market that’s not fairly developed sufficient to maintain a glut of content material. She predicts that the rising variety of high-end TV productions, nevertheless, will carry over into the world of movie, the place she expects budgets and manufacturing values to rise.
Festival director Jovan Marjanović agrees. “The native markets within the Balkans have grown, each for theatrical releases and TV and VOD,” he says. “This will end in extra expertise. People have had extra expertise, they usually have been capable of check issues with the collection. I believe it will translate into extra audacious movies.”
He provides: “I believe there’s a giant repositioning out there, and all people is considering what they’re doing. I believe we’ll most likely see extra greater movies for the native markets produced.”
The Sarajevo Film Festival runs Aug. 11 – 18.
