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.
