An intensive five-day programme focused on documentary films from Southeast Europe that are in production or post-production, the Docu Rough Cut Boutique, one of the main initiatives of Sarajevo’s CineLink Industry Days, has awarded three out of the five projects selected for this year’s edition. The projects were offered individual tutorials, group feedback sessions with field experts, exclusive screenings and one-on-one meetings by the organisation, from Monday 15 to Thursday 18 August.

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The awards, given out in collaboration with International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), DOK Leipzig, CAT&Docs, HBO Adria and Digital Cube, were announced last night. City of the Sun, a Georgian project directed by Rati Oneli and produced by Jim Stark and Dea Kulumbegashvili, received the IDFA Award, consisting of a visit to the IDFA, where they will meet with film professionals to discuss their project. The film is a surreal vision of a post-apocalyptic ghost town and its inhabitants, whose lives, dreams and destinies unfold amidst the grand ruins of the semi-abandoned mining town of Chiatura. Next, Turkey’s In the Shadow of War, directed and produced by Reyan Tuvi, received the CAT&Docs Award (including €2,000), HBO Adria Award (€2,000) and DOK Preview Award, which will allow the director to participate in the DOK Preview programme, part of DOK Leipzig. The film takes a peek at the journey of solidarity undertaken by a group of inhabitants of a village on the border between Turkey and Syria, hoping for the war to end, and fighting for their land and identity. The Hungarian project Ultra, directed by Balazs Simonyi and produced by Laszlo Jozsa and Simonyi himself, received the Work in Progress Digital Cube Award, providing the project with post-production services valued at €20,000. The film digs deeper into the Spartathlon, an ultra-distance race from Athens to Sparta, and the personal stories of the participants who embark on this challenging feat, running 246 kilometres in 36 hours.

Lastly, the programme also included the Croatian project F**k Yu, directed by Marija Ratkovic Vidakovic and Dinka Radonic and produced by the former, about a family that still lives as if the Yugoslavian values system were still on display, even though it has not existed for more than 25 years; and the Romanian-German project I Am Hercules, directed by Marius Iacob and produced by Irina Malcea and Christian Popp, about Romania’s Baile Herculane, one of the oldest spa resorts in Europe, as seen through the eyes of three self-made masseurs.