North Macedonia’s Teona Mitevska (“Mother”) and French director Céline Sciamma (“Portrait of a Lady on Fire”) are among the filmmakers who will launch an initiative at the Sarajevo Film Festival that looks to reshape the role of women in the film and TV industries with a “bold, punk and revolutionary” vision of an inclusive and sustainable screen sector.
Dubbed Sister Sister, the initiative aims to foster sisterhood and togetherness with women working across professions and disciplines in film and television. It will include a think tank at this year’s Sarajevo festival bringing together female filmmakers, producers, writers and academics from the former Yugoslavia to explore the future of women’s authorship in the region’s cinema.
The event will include three moderated roundtables in which participants identify key challenges, share experiences and formulate concrete recommendations for how to create, in the organizers’ words, “a more inclusive, courageous and sustainable audiovisual industry.”
The goal, says Mitevska, is to collectively draw up a manifesto “that addresses all of our concerns and ideals — something bold, punk and revolutionary.”
“This is a gathering about strength, joyful hunger and revolutionary anger of taking the space deserved,” says Mitevska. “And finally translating ideas into impact, as we explore the expanding influence of women worldwide as they reinvent the art of cinema, upend old rules and harness the power of this critical moment to shape a new way forward.”
