09/02/2015 - The festival names Izeta Gradevic as President of the Board and Jovan Marjanovic as Executive Director of the revamped fund

The Sarajevo Film Festival has opened the Sarajevo City of Film Fund for applicants with feature film projects from former Yugoslav countries and the wider region that wish to co-produce with and have potential to raise funding in new markets outside the Eurimages/Creative Europe MEDIA territories, as well as projects from these territories seeking a partner in Southeast Europe. The Middle East, North Africa, the Americas, India and East Asia are intended as the primary geographical focus.

Izeta Gradevic, Sarajevo Film Festival’s Creative Director, will preside the Fund’s Selection Board and Jovan Marjanovic, the festival’s Head of Industry, will serve as the Executive Director of the Fund. 

“We are looking for exciting projects from proven, as well as new talent from across the world. Our long experience with both selecting future successful films at project stage for our CineLink coproduction market on one side and programming a major film festival, on the other, gives us confidence that we will be able to support some really quality films,” said Izeta Gradevic. 

“Current international coproduction patterns don't involve many of the countries from our region. Ultimately, this is what we want to see change, but until then we actually have to create the demand. To this end, we have decided to operate a year-round open call for applications, so whenever a project establishes an eligible coproduction structure and raises over 60% of total finance we can review it and make the decision very quickly,” stated Jovan Marjanovic. 

The fund is looking to support production of up to 8 feature films, for which it has already secured a budget of over €400.000 for the 2015-2016 period. It features a Coproduction Scheme with up to €60.000 support per project in a form of a soft loan, and a P&A Scheme with up to €60.000 support per project in a form of a soft loan.

The main partners and funders of Sarajevo City of Film Fund are the European Commission’s Co-Production Funds support scheme in the framework of the Creative Europe MEDIA programme, and ATLANTIC Grupa, a major Croatian multinational consumer goods production and distribution company.