Sarajevo Film Festival opens with Pawlikowski's «Fatherland»

The festival opening today in the Bosnian capital has chosen for its inauguration a film about the rift between a father and a daughter within twentieth-century Germany. The 32nd edition of the Sarajevo Film Festival runs from 14 to 21 August 2026 and opens with Paweł Pawlikowski’s «Fatherland».

A note on sources: at present the news comes from a single origin — the Sarajevo Film Festival’s announcement, picked up by Screen Daily, Deadline and UPI; no independent confirmation is available beyond the festival’s communication.

The film

«Fatherland» tells the story of the relationship between Nobel Prize-winning writer Thomas Mann and his daughter Erika, played by Hanns Zischler and Sandra Hüller. The film won the Best Director award at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival and closes the trilogy Pawlikowski has dedicated to the Cold War.

On the choice of Sarajevo as a stop, the director commented: “This seems to me a good context in which to show the film” (our translation). The plainness of the phrase does not conceal the point: a festival born in a besieged city is a venue that lends weight to a film about exile and about political rupture within a family.

The jury and the career awards

Actress Emily Watson chairs the feature film competition jury and receives the Honorary Heart of Sarajevo, the festival’s honorary award. The same award goes to Iranian director Asghar Farhadi, to whom the festival dedicates a retrospective.

The choice of Farhadi carries weight beyond the selection: a Balkan festival dedicating its retrospective to an Iranian filmmaker signals a frame of reference that does not coincide with that of the Western European circuits. It is the kind of programming that appears as a parenthesis in the major festivals and here occupies the center.

Opening and closing

The opening ceremony on 14 August is hosted by Bosnian actor Kerim Čutuna. The closing, on 21 August, includes the screening of Danis Tanović’s «No Man’s Land»: a film from Bosnian cinema brought back to its home screen to close the circle of the week.

A new audience award

The organizational novelty of this edition is an award established together with exhibitor Cineplexx: an audience award for the best film in the Open Air Premiere section, worth a total of 20,000 euros.

The sum is not symbolic for a festival of this size, and the chosen formula — audience vote, open-air section — indicates where the festival places its center of gravity. Giving a cash prize to the open-air section means assigning economic value to the judgment of the audience and not only to that of the jury.

From the Cannes award to Sarajevo

The path of the opening film says something about the place the festival occupies in the calendar: a title awarded for direction at Cannes arrives in Bosnia a few weeks later, as the inauguration of a festival and not as a passing repeat screening. For an author closing a Cold War trilogy here, the choice of venue adds a layer of meaning that the festival itself highlights by giving it the opening night.

The verdict of the jury chaired by Emily Watson is expected at the closing on 21 August.