The 2015 Talents Sarajevo event will welcome 71 up-and-coming actors, directors, DoPs, film critics, producers and screenwriters from South-east Europe and the Southern Caucasus for a week of master classes, panel discussions, networking and training opportunities.

The Sarajevo Film Festival’s training platform for emerging film authors from the region was founded in 2007 in collaboration with the Berlin International Film Festival and the Berlinale Talents programme.

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Over the past eight years, Talents Sarajevo has become the regional hub where aspiring film professionals can train, meet and exchange ideas. In addition to bringing young filmmakers together, the platform also aims to introduce them to the work of established film professionals, inform them about the latest trends in the film industry and art, and ease their entry into the regional and international filmmaking community. 

The number of people interested in participating in this six-day programme that is tailored to the needs of aspiring regional talents and enlists renowned film professionals as mentors and lecturers has been growing constantly. This year, the organisers received 320 applications, and directors form the majority among the applicants, with 164 received.

Interest is also growing for participation in the Pack&Pitch segment of the programme, as illustrated by the 55 applications received this year, compared to 19 in 2014. This section is dedicated to film directors and producers, and offers them a chance to learn – under professional mentoring – how to analyse and pitch their projects before selection juries, their colleagues and other film professionals. In addition to Pack&Pitch, a newly established interdisciplinary hands-on training programme named Film Stage Studio has attracted the attention of scriptwriters and directors seeking to polish their dialogue development skills through an experience-based process in which a number of participants from all professional disciplines represented in Talents Sarajevo will take part. 

Over the past three years, most applications for Talents Sarajevo have been received from Romania, Turkey, Serbia, Croatia and Greece. The reputation of the Romanian New Wave, Greek absurdist cinema and the awakening interest in the film-language innovations of the new generation of filmmakers from neighbouring countries are reflected in the growing interest among young film professionals from these countries in participating in Talents Sarajevo. The average age of the Talents Sarajevo participants over the past three years has been 28 or 29.