The AJB DOC Film Festival, organised by TV broadcaster Al Jazeera Balkans, in cooperation with the Al Jazeera Media Network (AJMN) and the Al Jazeera Media Institute, is ready to get under way for the fifth time. This year, it will take place from 9-13 September in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. The objective of the AJB DOC Film Festival is to promote auteurs and documentaries addressing social phenomena, focusing on universal human values such as courage, truth, justice, tolerance and cosmopolitanism, but this year’s edition will unspool overshadowed by the dozens of armed conflicts taking place around the world, especially the Russian invasion of Ukraine. For this reason, the white dove has been chosen as a symbolic motif, to serve as a public appeal for peace.

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The film programme for the fifth edition of the festival, selected by Lejla Dedić, Đani Hasečić and Sead Kreševljaković, who finally picked 25 of the over 300 titles that were submitted, is divided into four sections (Competition Program, AJB Screening, Last Minute Cinema and SMART Doc), along with two special screenings. The Competition Program is dedicated to documentaries that have been adapted for TV broadcasting, the non-competitive Last Minute Cinema features films hand-picked from the festival circuit, while AJB Screening showcases the films that will soon be shown on TV through the Al Jazeera network. The complete programme is available on this website.

Three awards will be given out – two are for the competition films (AJB DOC Main Award and AJB Program Award), while all of the titles screening at the festival will be in the running for the Audience Award. Additionally, any film selected for the AJB DOC Film Festival programme may be considered for an acquisition agreement with Al Jazeera Balkans and screening on the AJB television channel.

The awards in the Competition Program will be decided on by the five-member jury of filmmakers and documentarians. As was announced earlier this week, the jury members are Aida Begić (Bosnia), Dana Budisavljević (Croatia), Fatma Riahi (Tunisia), Ensar Altay (Turkey) and Phil Grabsky (UK).

The Competition Program will feature Simon Lereng Wilmont’s Sundance title A House Made of Splinters [+lee también:
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ficha de la película], Peter Triest’s A Parked Life, Elli Rintala’s Fragments of Humanity, Susanne Regina Meures’ Girl Gang [+lee también:
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entrevista: Susanne Regina Meures
ficha de la película] and Mark Wiese’s This Stolen Country of Mine, among others. Meanwhile, Celebrity Untold: Miroslav Ćiro Blažević by Irena Škorić, Haidy Kancler’s Melting Dreams and Sarajevo Safari [+lee también:
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ficha de la película] by Miran Zupanič will be shown in the AJB Screening section. Finally, Srđan Keča’s Museum of the Revolution [+lee también:
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entrevista: Srđan Keča
ficha de la película], Cem Kaya’s Love, Deutschmarks and Death [+lee también:
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entrevista: Cem Kaya
ficha de la película], Matt Sarnecki’s The Killing of a Journalist [+lee también:
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entrevista: Matt Sarnecki
ficha de la película], and Dida [+lee también:
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ficha de la película] by Nikola Ilić and Corina Schwingruber Ilić will be screened in the Last Minute Cinema strand.

The big novelty this year is the kick-off of the Industry Days platform (see the news), created in cooperation with the Al Jazeera Documentary Channel, which is aimed at supporting the development of documentary film production around the world, including international and regional co-productions. This year, the 27 selected projects at different stages of production from the regions of Southeastern Europe, the Caucasus and MENA will be presented in three different pitching categories. The director of the AJB DOC Film Festival, Edhem Fočo, notes that the Industry Days @ AJB DOC platform represents a significant step forward in the development of the festival, but also points out that the focus will remain firmly on films and auteurs.

Along with screenings of AJB DOC films and the Industry Days, two educational programmes will also take place at the festival. Journalist Galeb Nikačević, who is also the creator of the popular Agelast podcast, will give a master class that will be held under the auspices of the Info Center of the European Union in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In addition, a three-day training session, called Production of Documentary Films with a Smartphone, will be held in cooperation with the Al Jazeera Media Institute and Samsung.