The French actress Isabelle Huppert, and mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu will be among the guests of the 25th edition of the Sarajevo film Festival that opens on Friday evening with a ceremony in the heart of the bosnian capital. This festival, which attracts stars of the film, including Robert De Niro, Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, or Wim Wenders in recent years, had been launched as an “act of resistance” during the siege of Sarajevo (1992-1995).

over The years, the event has become one of the most important gatherings of the world of cinema in south-eastern Europe. Its organizers give themselves to the mission of promoting film production in this part of the continent. Isabelle Huppert, award-winning several times at Cannes, the César awards, and winner of a Golden Globe, Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu, a five-time oscar winner, and poland’s Pawel Pawlikowski, whose film Cold War won the prize for directing at the Cannes film Festival in 2018, will receive the Heart of honor of Sarajevo, a special award of the festival for their “outstanding contribution” to the seventh art, have announced the organizers.

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another actor and mexican director Gael Garcia Bernal, will be one of the other stars of the festival in Sarajevo, where it was already present five years ago. It will present to the public his film Chicuarotes , screened out of competition at the last Cannes film Festival. Nine feature-length films, the productions of the countries of South-eastern Europe, compete for the title of best film. An additional forty works have been selected in three other categories of competition. The jury of the main competition will be chaired by the Swedish filmmaker Ruben Östlund, winner of the Palme d’or at Cannes in 2017 with The Square .

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“We have a dynamic curriculum and varied, but what is perhaps common to all these films is that they focus on the contemporary life of the characters is particularly strong,” said the writer Elma Tataragic, in charge of the selection of films, cited by the agency Fena. The festival will begin with the screening of Son, the filmmaker’s bosnian Ines Tanovic, one of the few movies bosnians, presented in competition in the 25 editions of the festival.

This year, 270 films from 56 countries will be screened during the eight days of the festival. A retrospective of the work of the Polish filmmaker Pawel Pawlikowski, Oscar for the best foreign language film in 2015, with Ida , is proposed.