The 31st Sarajevo Film Festival has announced that Italian filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino will be honoured with the Honorary Heart of Sarajevo Award.

Jovan Marjanović, director of the Sarajevo Film Festival praised Sorrentino's unique ability to transform personal narratives into universal stories. “Paolo Sorrentino has managed to do what every filmmaker dreams of – he has made a global impact through local, personal stories. With a visually luxurious, emotional and intellectually insightful style, he has won the hearts of audiences around the world, who saw his characters, no matter how eccentric or withdrawn, as a mirror of our world – often absurd, sometimes cruel, but always deeply human.”

The festival will celebrate Sorrentino's career with a comprehensive retrospective of his work as part of the "Tribute to" programme, which will also include a master class by the filmmaker. Sorrentino began his feature-film career with One Man Up [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] in 2001. His subsequent works quickly established him as one of Europe's most distinctive voices in cinema, including The Consequences of Love (2004), The Family Friend (2006), the Cannes Jury Prize winner Il Divo [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Nicola Giuliano
intervista: Paolo Sorrentino
intervista: Philippe Desandre
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intervista: Paolo Sorrentino
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intervista: Paolo Sorrentino
scheda film] earned him the Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize at Venice and an Academy Award nomination, he released Parthenope [+leggi anche:
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The Honorary Heart of Sarajevo, established in 2005, recognises individuals who have made exceptional contributions to cinema and supported the development of the film industry.