The Sarajevo Film Festival, founded as an act of defiance towards the end of the 1992-95 siege during the Bosnian war, has become the biggest platform for the promotion of regional cinematography.
The festival, which this year shows 222 films from 61 countries and has an audience of about 100,000 people, is held between August 12 and August 20.
"The Sarajevo Film Festival has been recognised today across the world as a positive signal from this town and we are pleased to see the local, regional, European and the world stars coming to Sarajevo, not only to show their movies here but also to share their experiences with the young (film makers and actors) from this region who found Sarajevo as a starting point for their film careers," said Mirsad Purivatra, the Director of the Sarajevo Film Festival, who last Friday took part in the opening ceremony of the 22nd Festival alonside U.S. actor and producer Robert de Niro.
The 73 year-old presented a digital version of Martin Scorsese's film "Taxi Driver", in which he starred, to mark its 40th anniversary.
But his appearance was marked by his remarks on U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, of whom he said he should not run for president because he was "totally nuts".
This year, eight regional feature films are competing for the main award of the festival, the Heart of Sarajevo.
The shortlisted movies are Serbian 'Humidity' and 'Black Pin', Turkish 'Album' and 'Fields', Romanian 'Dogs' and 'Scarred Hearts', Bulgarian 'Godless' and a Spanish film called 'A Decent Woman'.
An international jury will be chaired by Palestinian film-maker Elia Suleiman.
