Sarajevo Film Festival Opens With Pawlikowski's Fatherland, Closes With Restored No Man's Land
Paweł Pawlikowski's Fatherland will open the 32nd Sarajevo Film Festival on 14 August 2026, with the Oscar-winning director personally welcoming audiences at the gala screening. The film, the final chapter of Pawlikowski's Cold War trilogy, had its world premiere In Competition at Cannes earlier this year. It runs 82 minutes as a co-production of Poland, Germany, Italy, and France, and centres on the relationship between Nobel Prize-winning writer Thomas Mann and his daughter Erika — an actor, writer, and rally driver. (Deadline, Sarajevo Film Festival)
The festival closes on 21 August with a restored version of No Man's Land, Bosnian director Danis Tanović's 2001 debut feature that won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. For a festival rooted in a city once under siege, bookending eight days of cinema with a film about the absurdity of war carries its own quiet weight. (Deadline)
Pawlikowski's return to Sarajevo is a homecoming of sorts. He screened Cold War at the festival in years past, and his 1992 documentary Serbian Epics appeared in the festival's early days, when the event was still finding its footing in a post-war city. (Deadline)
Festival director Jovan Marjanović has assembled a lineup of 51 films across four competition sections: narrative features, feature and short documentaries, narrative shorts, and student shorts. The programme includes 21 world premieres, six international premieres, one European premiere, and 23 regional premieres. Among the competition titles are the world premiere of Slovenian director Urša Menart's Everything That's Wrong With You and the European premiere of Macedonian filmmaker Dina Duma's Skateboarding Is Not For Girls. (Deadline)
The documentary competition alone comprises 21 films, with one additional title shown out of competition. (Sarajevo Film Festival)
Emily Watson — BAFTA winner and two-time Oscar nominee — will head the festival's competition jury. Three major masterclass guests are also locked in: Woody Harrelson, Diego Luna, and Iranian director Asghar Farhadi, a two-time Academy Award winner. The festival's Talents Sarajevo programme, a development platform for emerging film professionals from the region, runs from 15 to 20 August. (Deadline, Sarajevo Film Festival)
For a festival that began in 1995 as a cultural act of defiance during the siege of Sarajevo, the 32nd edition carries its share of forward-looking initiative alongside the retrospective glow of that restored No Man's Land. A female filmmakers support programme, now in its second year and backed by sponsor Uniqa Insurance Group, continues as part of the festival's industry-facing work. (Deadline)
The full screening schedule was announced in August, at the latest one week before the festival's opening. (Sarajevo Film Festival)
