The Sarajevo Film Festival has unveiled the films that will play in its Open Air Program, which include Joachim Trier’s Cannes Grand Prix winner “Sentimental Value,” Michel Franco’s Berlin competitor “Dreams,” Nadia Fall’s Sundance competition title “Brides,” Dominik Moll’s Cannes competitor “Case 137,” and Miguel Ángel Jiménez’s Locarno title “The Birthday Party.”
Some of the screenings will be attended by stars or directors of the films, who will be in Sarajevo to receive the Honorary Heart of Sarajevo, including Willem Dafoe with “The Birthday Party,” Stellan Skarsgård with “Sentimental Value,” Franco with “Dreams,” and Paolo Sorrentino with “The Great Beauty.”
The program is divided into two sections: Open Air is for festival favorites and cinematic classics, and Open Air Premiere will showcase films from the former Yugoslav region.
OPEN AIR PROGRAM
THE PAVILION – Opening Film
Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, North Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro, 2025, 100 min.
Director: Dino Mustafić
Cast: Rade Šerbedžija, Zijah Sokolović, Miralem Zubčević, Ksenija Pajić, Jasna Diklić, Branka Petrić, Meto Jovanovski, Vladimir Jurc Lali, Kaća Dorić, Muhamed Bahonjić
After years of abuse and humiliation, residents of the Pavilion, a home for the elderly, start a rebellion. Armed by illegal means, they capture the home, take its staff hostage and clash with authorities. Their desperate battle turns into a political and media spectacle and their old age turns into their advantage: they have nothing to lose and are ready to fight to the bitter end. A new order is established in the Pavilion, guided by the thirst for revenge and accumulated rage, and negotiating with the rebels becomes impossible.
BRIDES
United Kingdom, 2025, 93 min.
Director: Nadia Fall
Cast: Ebada Hassan, Safiyya Ingar, Leo Bill, Arthur Darvill, Sinead Matthews, Yusra Warsama, Ali Khan, Cemre Ebuzziya, Aziz Capkurt
Teenage best friends Doe and Muna are going on the trip of a lifetime. Quiet, watchful Doe hasn’t travelled since she arrived in the U.K. at the age of three as a refugee from Somalia. Badass Muna, of Pakistani heritage, is the dominant force of the pair, leading Doe through airport security. The girls are giddy; excited about their adventure. They are not going on holiday but to Istanbul, to be met by a stranger who will take them to the border to start a new life in Syria.
CASE 137
France, 2025, 115 min.
Director: Dominik Moll
Cast: Léa Drucker, Jonathan Turnbull, Mathilde Roehrich, Pascal Sangla, Claire Bodson, Florence Viala, Hélène Alexandridis
Stéphanie, a police officer working for Internal Affairs, is assigned to a case involving a young man who has been severely wounded during a tense and chaotic demonstration in Paris. While she finds no evidence of illegitimate police violence, the case takes a personal turn when she discovers the victim is from her hometown.
DREAMS
Mexico, United States, 2025, 95 min.
Director: Michel Franco
Cast: Jessica Chastain, Isaác Hernández, Rupert Friend, Marshall Bell, Eligio Meléndez, Mercedes Hernández
Fernando, a young ballet dancer from Mexico, dreams of international recognition and a life in the United States. Believing his lover, Jennifer, a socialite and philanthropist, will support him, he leaves everything behind—narrowly escaping death in the process. However, his arrival disrupts Jennifer’s carefully curated world. She will do anything to protect both their futures—and the life she has built.
LEAVE ONE DAY
France, 2025, 96 min.
Director: Amélie Bonnin
Cast: Juliette Armanet, Bastien Bouillon, François Rollin, Tewfik Jallab, Dominique Blanc, Mhamed Arezki, Pierre-Antoine Billon, Amandine Dewasmes
Cécile is about to open her own gourmet restaurant, finally making her dream come true, when suddenly her father has a heart attack and she is called back to the village where she was born. Far from the hubbub of Paris life, she runs into her teenage crush. Memories come flooding back, destabilising her certainties.
SENTIMENTAL VALUE
Norway, Germany, Denmark, France, Sweden, United Kingdom, Turkey, 2025, 132 min.
Director: Joachim Trier
Cast: Renate Reinsve, Stellan Skarsgård, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, Elle Fanning
Sisters Nora and Agnes reunite with their estranged father, the charismatic Gustav, a once-renowned film director who offers Nora, as stage actor, a role in what he hopes will be his comeback film. When Nora turns it down, she soon discovers he’s given her part to an eager young Hollywood star. Suddenly, the two sisters must navigate their complicated relationship with their father and deal with an American dropped right into the middle of their complex family dynamics.
THE BIRTHDAY PARTY
Greece, Spain, Netherlands, United Kingdom, 2025, 103 min.
Director: Miguel Ángel Jimenéz
Cast: Willem Dafoe, Vic Carmen Sonne, Emma Suárez, Joe Cole, Carlos Cuevas
Markos Timoleon, an Onassis-like Greek tycoon, is celebrating his daughter’s 25th birthday on his private island. There, he will face an unpredictable chain of events that will threaten his dominance and shake his very existence. Based on Panos Karnezis’s acclaimed novel of the same name, “The Birthday Party” is set in the late 1970s world of jet-setters, where glamorous parties meet Greek tragedy and “The Great Gatsby” meets Vinterberg’s “The Celebration.”
THE GREAT BEAUTY
Italy, France, 2013, 141 min.
Director: Paolo Sorrentino
Cast: Toni Servillo, Carlo Verdone, Sabrina Ferilli, Carlo Buccirosso, Iaia Forte, Pamela Villoresi, Galatea Ranzi, Massimo De Francovich, Roberto Herlitzka, Isabella Ferrari
Aristocratic ladies, social climbers, politicians, high-flying criminals, journalists, actors, decadent nobles, prelates, artists, and intellectuals—whether authentic or presumed—form the tissue of these flaky relationship, all engulfed in a desperate Babylon, which plays out in the antique palaces, immense villas, and most beautiful terraces in the city. They are all here, and they are not seen in a good light. Sixty-five-year-old Jep Gambardella, indolent and disenchanted, his eyes permanently imbued with gin and tonic, watches this parade of hollow, doomed, powerful yet depressed humanity. All the effort of life, disguised as specious, distracted entertainment.
OPEN AIR PREMIERE PROGRAM
BOSNIAN KNIGHT
Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, 2025, 79 min.
Director: Tarik Hodžić
During the Bosnian War, Sead Delić escaped to the free territory of Srebrenica, where he served as a soldier and survived the 1995 genocide. After the war, he moved to the United States and fulfilled his childhood dream of becoming a truck driver. Despite his new life, the past continued to haunt him. Seeking answers about his identity, he immersed himself in the history of medieval Bosnia, visiting fortresses, towns, and stećak tombstones. This passion gave his life new meaning and became his mission to honor Bosnia’s heritage.
CAT’S CRY
Serbia, Canada, Croatia, 2024, 94 min.
Director: Sanja Živković
Cast: Jasmin Geljo, Andrijana Đorđević, Sanja Mikitišin, Marija Škaričić, Denis Murić
In a small Serbian town, Milena dreams of fame and independence, drawn by the allure of a Serbian music channel. Her aspirations and plans for the future are challenged when she gives birth to a baby with a rare genetic condition called cat’s cry syndrome. While her partner Igor and his family refuse to take responsibility for the baby, Milena’s father Stamen, a retired factory worker, urges her to leave Igor and return home, offering to raise the child with her. Overwhelmed and fearful of her future, Milena disappears. Now, Stamen and his new wife must fight a flawed social system for custody of their granddaughter while Milena struggles to find her own way forward.
RADIO RAMBO AMADEUS
Serbia, 2025, 73 min.
Director: Dušan Varda
International music superstar Rambo Amadeus is among the most popular personalities in the Balkans. A unique performer with a 40-year career, he gained importance in this part of Europe in the fields of music, poetry, sailing, philosophy, marketing, and political history. This film traces his thinking about, testing and developing an idea to launch his own radio program in 2022.
SURVIVING EARTH
United Kingdom, 2025, 100 min.
Director: Thea Gajić
Cast: Slavko Sobin, Olive Gray, Stuart Martin, Peter Coonan, Toni Gojanović, Ann Ogbomo
A Yugoslav refugee and harmonica player in Bristol builds a new life and forms a Balkan music band, but past trauma threatens to destroy his relationships and the delicate peace he’s found with his daughter.
THE LOST DREAM TEAM
Croatia, Serbia, Italy, Slovenia, 2025, 82 min.
Director: Jure Pavlović
The film tells the story of the last Yugoslav basketball team and their quest for a gold medal at the 1991 European Championships amid political turmoil and impending war. It serves as a psychological study of the players, the trials of their camaraderie, and the extraordinary experience of belonging to a unique team in sports history—the only team to win gold, stand on the podium, and watch their flag rise for the glory of a country that had ceased to exist three days earlier.
THE TRACK
Canada, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 2025, 92 min.
Director: Ryan Sidhoo
“The Track” is a contemporary coming-of-age story that follows three teenagers—Mirza, Zlatan, and Hamza —as they chase their Olympic dreams in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina. Training on their bullet-riddled luge track, a relic of the 1984 Sarajevo Winter Games, the boys are guided by their resilient coach, Senad. His unwavering commitment to rebuilding the neglected track mirrors his struggle to secure a future for the boys in a country burdened with one of the highest youth unemployment rates in the world.
WHITES WASH AT NINETY
Slovenia, Italy, Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, 2025, 142 min.
Director: Marko Naberšnik
Cast: Lea Cok, Anica Dobra, Jurij Zrnec, Tjaša Železnik, Žiga Šorli, Mei Rabič, Jaka Mehle, Vladimir Tintor, Iva Krajnc Bagola, Saša Tabaković, Jure Rajšp, Polona Juh, Blaž Dolenc
The life of young Bronja, growing up in the 1980s, changes when her mother dies of cancer. After a childhood marked by this loss, her life is again interrupted by tragic events, which she overcomes with optimism.
