After Italian filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino (read news), the 31st Sarajevo Film Festival has announced that Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgård will be honoured with the Honorary Heart of Sarajevo Award.

Jovan Marjanović, director of the Sarajevo Film Festival described Skarsgård as "a longtime friend of Sarajevo, and we are delighted to welcome him back. His career is filled with unforgettable roles in films that challenge, move, and stay with audiences. This award is a heartfelt thank you for his outstanding contribution to cinema and for the continued support he has shown to our festival.”

Stellan Skarsgård, also a curator and one of the patrons of the Katrin Cartlidge Foundation - whose scholarships were awarded at the Sarajevo Film Festival - presented the foundation’s scholarship to Juanita Wilson at the Festival’s 15th edition in 2009. "The Sarajevo Film Festival remains unwavering and driven in its aim to highlight subjects of great consequence, underscored by an intense lust for life. I love going there”, says Skarsgård. Skarsgård's international breakthrough came in 1982 with Hans Alfredson’s The Simple-Minded Murderer, for which he won the Berlinale Silver Bear for Best Actor, and was cemented later in 1996 with Breaking the Waves, which launched his long-running collaboration with Lars von Trier. His first significant Hollywood role came in 1990 when he portrayed a Russian submarine captain in The Hunt for Red October, and has since worked with filmmakers such as Gus Van Sant, Steven Spielberg and Miloš Forman. He has recently appeared in Denis Villeneuve’s Dune, the Star Wars series Andor and Joachim Trier's Cannes Grand Prix winner Sentimental Value [+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.