Sandra Wollner's 'Everytime' Wins Top Prize at 32nd Sarajevo Film Festival
Sandra Wollner's Everytime has won the Heart of Sarajevo for best narrative feature at the 32nd Sarajevo Film Festival, the festival's highest fiction honour. The jury, headed by two-time Academy Award nominee Emily Watson, chose the film unanimously, praising it in its citation as a work in which "moments of cinematic grace float through this mesmerically elastic and transcendental grief-soaked ghost story" (Variety).
The prize carries a cash award of 16,000 euros (Sarajevo Film Festival). For Wollner, an Austrian director working in her third feature, the win adds a second major festival laurel to the same film: Everytime previously took the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes — a section of the festival dedicated to innovative, auteur-driven storytelling (Variety).
Everytime is an Austrian-German production, 121 minutes long, produced by Lixi Frank, Viktoria Stolpe and colleagues (Sarajevo Film Festival). The story follows a mother, a young daughter and a teenage boy, united by tragedy, who travel to the Canary Islands for a family holiday (Variety).
The 32nd edition of the festival ran from 14 to 21 August 2026 in Sarajevo, with 51 films competing across its official programmes for Heart of Sarajevo awards (Sarajevo Film Festival). Awards were presented at the festival's closing ceremony on 21 August.
Georgian filmmaker Ana Urushadze took the Heart of Sarajevo for best director, worth 10,000 euros, for Supporting Role (Sarajevo Film Festival; Variety). The acting honours went to Eva Kostić, named best actress for her lead role in 17, the debut feature from North Macedonian director Kosara Mitić, and to Adrian Văncică, named best actor for the Romanian film You Don't Belong Here, directed by Florin Şerban (Variety).
The Heart of Sarajevo for best documentary feature went to Biljana Tutorov and Petar Glomazić for To Hold a Mountain (Variety). Woody Harrelson received the Honorary Heart of Sarajevo at this year's edition, joining past recipients including Isabelle Huppert, Tim Roth, Mads Mikkelsen and Alejandro González Iñárritu (Sarajevo Film Festival; Sarajevo Film Festival).
What makes this year's competition worth noting is the spread of recognition across the region. Best actress went to a North Macedonian debut; best actor to a Romanian production; best director to a Georgian film-maker. For a festival founded in the wake of the Bosnian War to champion cinema from and about the region, the 2026 winners reflect that founding mission reaching well beyond the Balkans while still centring Eastern European and neighbouring voices.
