04/08/2026 - The opening and closing films, along with six more award-winning titles, are to be shown in the former strand, while Open Air Premiere presents seven flicks from the West Balkans region

The Sarajevo Film Festival’s (14-21 August) Open Air programme will, as is tradition, screen recent festival hits and award-winning films as well as two classics at Coca Cola Open Air, one of the largest open-air venues on the festival circuit. As previously reported, the opening film of the festival will be Pawel Pawlikowski’s Fatherland (see the news). The festival will close with a screening of the newly restored version of the Oscar-winning No Man’s Land by Danis Tanović. In between the two, the programme also features titles like Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Cannes Grand Prix-winning Minotaur, Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s Cannes competition title The Beloved and Michael Winterbottom’s classic Welcome to Sarajevo from 1997, with which the festival will honour one of this year’s Honorary Heart of Sarajevo winners, actor Woody Harrelson.

At a separate venue, the UNIQA Open Air Cinema Stari Grad, the Open Air Premiere programme will present seven films hailing from the region or directed by regional filmmakers. Three of them have world-premiere status: Darko Štante’s The Lost Son, Predrag Ličina’s The Virus of Pathological Kindness and Hari Šečić’s The Widower. Other titles include Marijana Janković’s Home, which premiered at IFFR; Miroslav Terzić’s 3 Weeks After, fresh from Karlovy Vary; Miha Hočevar’s Hidden People; and Igor Jelinović’s IFFR-screened and Pula-winning Honey Bunny. All of the aforementioned films will be competing for the audience-judged Prix Cineplexx award established jointly by the festival and the region’s leading movie theatre chain. The purpose of the award is to strengthen the tie between the festival and the theatrical success of the movie.

Here is the full list of films announced in these sections:

Open Air

Palestine 36 – Anemarie Jacir (Palestine/UK/France/Denmark/Norway/Qatar/Saudi Arabia/UAE)
Ashes – Diego Luna (Mexico/Spain)
Fatherland – Paweł Pawlikowski (Poland/Germany/Italy/France)
No Good Men – Shahrbanoo Sadat (Germany/France/Norway/Denmark/Afghanistan)
The Beloved – Rodrigo Sorogoyen (Spain/France)
No Man’s Land – Danis Tanović (Bosnia and Herzegovina/Slovenia/France/Belgium/Italy/UK, 2001)
Welcome to Sarajevo – Michael Winterbottom (UK/USA, 1997)
Minotaur – Andrey Zvyagintsev (France/Latvia/Germany)

Open Air Premiere

Hidden People – Miha Hočevar (Slovenia/Iceland/Serbia)
Home – Marijana Janković (Denmark)
Honey Bunny – Igor Jelinović (Croatia/Serbia)
The Virus of Pathological Kindness – Predrag Ličina (Serbia/Croatia/Slovenia/Bosnia and Herzegovina)
The Widower – Hari Šečić (Bosnia and Herzegovina)
The Lost Son – Darko Štante (Slovenia/Greece/Croatia/Italy/North Macedonia)
3 Weeks After – Miroslav Terzić (Serbia/Bulgaria/Italy/Croatia/Luxembourg)