The organizers of the Sarajevo Film Festival and its parallel industry arm, CineLink Industry Days, pride themselves on being the launching pad for filmmakers from Southeast Europe, a region rich in talent but often lacking the institutional frameworks to support it. 

In some ways, those challenges are only growing, as the Balkan industry confronts many of the same issues and existential threats — from technological disruption to economic turbulence and broader geopolitical uncertainty — harrying decision-makers in Hollywood.  

Yet beyond bracing the regional industry for such headwinds, this year’s edition of CineLink looks to offer a reminder of why the annual Sarajevo confab — and other events like it — remains vital to the health of the film and TV ecosystem.  

“We know that markets and festivals are putting a lot of effort to not only discover the talents who will come next, but we actually nurture them throughout their career,” says Sarajevo industry head Maša Marković. “With all these technological changes, I think the role of festivals and markets becomes even more important, because of the pipeline that we are building.”

That role will be examined throughout this year’s CineLink Talks strand, with conversations such as “Gatekeepers or Gardeners? How Major Festivals Cultivate and Curate the Global Film Ecosystem,” and “Who Gets Seen? European Films, Global Recognition and the New Visibility Economy,” exploring how access is created at the highest levels of the industry, as well as what responsibility that places on industry decision-makers.

Other talks will explore both the threat and potential posed by AI, the evolving role of film funds as they strive to keep pace with a changing industry, and the prospects of homegrown IP from Southeast Europe finding broader success.

A key focus of the CineLink program is its influential Co-Production Market, open to films from Southeast Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. This year’s line-up features 16 films, nine of which are directed or co-directed by women, among them “Peace,” the third film from Bulgarian director Ralitza Petrova, whose debut “Godless” won the Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival in 2015; and “Forbidden Fruit,” from Slovenia’s Urška Djukić, who earned rave reviews at last year’s Berlinale with her debut “Little Trouble Girls” (pictured). Also being presented is “Madness and Honey Days,” by Iraqi writer and director Ahmed Yassin Al-Darraji, whose debut “Hanging Gardens” (2022) premiered at the Venice Film Festival.

Six fiction features and two documentaries, meanwhile, make up the Works in Progress selection, among them Assel Aushakimova’s “Pay the Bill,” the follow-up to the Kazakh filmmaker’s 2024 Tribeca-winning dramedy “Bikechess.” The WIP strand will also feature a special session with Bosnian filmmaker Jasmila Žbanić, who will present exclusive excerpts from “Quo Vadis, Aida? — The Missing Part,” the sequel to her harrowing, Oscar-nominated war drama.

A rising tide of fresh and dynamic voices — such as 2025 Rotterdam winner Igor Bezinović (“Fiume o Morte!”) and Slovenian breakout and CineLink alum Djukić (“Little Trouble Girls”) — points to the ongoing vitality of filmmaking in Southeast Europe. Indeed, the emerging generation of talents underscores the Balkans’ historic strengths, with Marković noting: “The region has great creative potential, without any doubt. It’s very good for entry-level professionals. The problem is about the progression. It’s not about people getting into the industry; it’s about when they hit the ceiling.”

To that end, CineLink has been working with creative industries consultancy Olsberg SPI to conduct a skills gap analysis in the Western Balkans, while also examining how its industry events and training programs are addressing the shortages in the region.

“We were really thinking about how our focus goes beyond not only presenting the best projects, but also thinking more long-term,” says Marković. “This is mostly connected to the structural challenges we have, either the lack of financing, the lack of commissioning. You also have a very big brain drain in the region, and these kinds of professionals who start working somewhere else…[because they] hit the ceiling of what they can actually achieve here.”

Bolstering support for the region’s filmmakers often means forging stronger ties with counterparts both in Europe and across the globe, and above all, Sarajevo’s industry platform is focused on bringing people together. This year’s event will welcome a delegation of Swiss filmmakers, producers and industry professionals to explore collaborations in the Balkans, while CineLink is also working with other members of the F.A.M.E. (Film and Audiovisual Markets in Europe) Alliance, which was launched by two dozen major European film and TV markets in 2024, to jointly tackle challenges affecting stakeholders across the continent.

“What we want to do at CineLink is to help these people collaborate and make things that can have great success regionally and also [internationally],” says Marković. This includes a range of activities — from workshops to mentorships to other support programs — that the festival and its industry arm conduct year-round.

“It’s not only about August,” Marković says. “This is a focal point of everything we did for the past year.”