Introducing the Open Air Programme of the 31st Sarajevo Film Festival

The Open Air Programme of the 31st Sarajevo Film Festival this year consists of two sections: Open Air and Open Air Premiere. 

 

The Open Air programme, alongside the opening film “The Pavilion” by Dino Mustafić, will bring seven more films to the Coca-Cola Open Air Cinema, showcasing some of the most important arthouse films of the year as well as cinematic classics.

Some of the films in this programme will be presented by acclaimed directors, actors, and screenwriters - recipients of the Honorary Heart of Sarajevo - including Paolo Sorrentino, Willem Dafoe, Ray Winstone, Stellan Skarsgård and Michel Franco, recipient of the Honorary Heart of Sarajevo and guest of the “Tribute to” programme at the 26th Sarajevo Film Festival.

 

Skarsgård will open the Talents Sarajevo programme, while Franco, Winstone and Dafoe, along with Sorrentino and Ilya Khrzhanovskiy - the latter two being featured in this year’s “Tribute to” programme - will hold masterclasses. 

 

These masterclasses offer a unique opportunity to engage with the audience and explore key aspects of their careers. Admission is free.

 

 

Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, North Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro, 2025, 100 min.

Director: Dino Mustafić

Cast: Rade Šerbedžija, Zijah Sokolović, Miralem Zubčević, Ksenija Pajić, Jasna Diklić, Branka Petrić, Meto Jovanovski, Vladimir Jurc Lali, Kaća Dorić, Muhamed Bahonjić 

 

After years of abuse and humiliation, residents of the Pavilion, a home for the elderly, start a rebellion. Armed by illegal means, they capture the home, take its staff hostage and clash with authorities. Their desperate battle turns into a political and media spectacle and their old age turns into their advantage: they have nothing to lose and are ready to fight to the bitter end. A new order is established in the Pavilion, guided by the thirst for revenge and accumulated rage, and negotiating with the rebels becomes impossible. 

 

United Kingdom, 2025, 93 min.

Director: Nadia Fall

Cast: Ebada Hassan, Safiyya Ingar, Leo Bill, Arthur Darvill, Sinead Matthews, Yusra Warsama, Ali Khan, Cemre Ebuzziya, Aziz Capkurt

 

Teenage best friends Doe and Muna are going on the trip of a lifetime. Quiet, watchful Doe hasn’t travelled since she arrived in the UK at the age of three as a refugee from Somalia. Badass Muna, of Pakistani heritage, is the dominant force of the pair, leading Doe through airport security. The girls are giddy; excited about their adventure. They are not going on holiday but to Istanbul, to be met by a stranger who will take them to the border to start a new life in Syria.

 

France, 2025, 115 min.

Director: Dominik Moll

Cast: Léa Drucker, Jonathan Turnbull, Mathilde Roehrich, Pascal Sangla, Claire Bodson, Florence Viala, Hélène Alexandridis

 

Stéphanie, a police officer working for Internal Affairs, is assigned to a case involving a young man who has been severely wounded during a tense and chaotic demonstration in Paris. While she finds no evidence of illegitimate police violence, the case takes a personal turn when she discovers the victim is from her hometown.

 

Mexico, United States, 2025, 95 min. 

Director: Michel Franco

Cast: Jessica Chastain, Isaác Hernández, Rupert Friend, Marshall Bell, Eligio Meléndez, Mercedes Hernández

 

Fernando, a young ballet dancer from Mexico, dreams of international recognition and a life in the United States. Believing his lover, Jennifer, a socialite and philanthropist, will support him, he leaves everything behind—narrowly escaping death in the process. However, his arrival disrupts Jennifer’s carefully curated world. She will do anything to protect both their futures—and the life she has built.

 

France, 2025, 96 min.

Director: Amélie Bonnin

Cast: Juliette Armanet, Bastien Bouillon, François Rollin, Tewfik Jallab, Dominique Blanc, Mhamed Arezki, Pierre-Antoine Billon, Amandine Dewasmes

 

Cécile is about to open her own gourmet restaurant, finally making her dream come true, when suddenly her father has a heart attack and she is called back to the village where she was born. Far from the hubbub of Paris life, she runs into her teenage crush. Memories come flooding back, destabilising her certainties.

 

Norway, Germany, Denmark, France, Sweden, United Kingdom, Türkiye, 2025, 132 min. 

Director: Joachim Trier

Cast: Renate Reinsve, Stellan Skarsgård, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, Elle Fanning

 

Sisters Nora and Agnes reunite with their estranged father, the charismatic Gustav, a once-renowned film director who offers Nora, as stage actor, a role in what he hopes will be his comeback film. When Nora turns it down, she soon discovers he’s given her part to an eager young Hollywood star. Suddenly, the two sisters must navigate their complicated relationship with their father and deal with an American dropped right into the middle of their complex family dynamics.

 

Greece, Spain, Netherlands, United Kingdom, 2025, 103 min.

Director: Miguel Ángel Jimenéz

Cast: Willem Dafoe, Vic Carmen Sonne, Emma Suárez, Joe Cole, Carlos Cuevas

 

Markos Timoleon, an Onassis-like Greek tycoon, is celebrating his daughter’s twenty-fifth birthday on his private island. There, he will face an unpredictable chain of events that will threaten his dominance and shake his very existence. Based on Panos Karnezis’s acclaimed novel of the same name, THE BIRTHDAY PARTY is set in the late 1970s world of jet-setters, where glamorous parties meet Greek tragedy and “The Great Gatsby” meets Vinterberg's THE CELEBRATION.

 

Italy, France, 2013, 141 min.

Director: Paolo Sorrentino

Cast: Toni Servillo, Carlo Verdone, Sabrina Ferilli, Carlo Buccirosso, Iaia Forte, Pamela Villoresi, Galatea Ranzi, Massimo De Francovich, Roberto Herlitzka, Isabella Ferrari

 

Aristocratic ladies, social climbers, politicians, high-flying criminals, journalists, actors, decadent nobles, prelates, artists, and intellectuals—whether authentic or presumed—form the tissue of these flaky relationship, all engulfed in a desperate Babylon, which plays out in the antique palaces, immense villas, and most beautiful terraces in the city. They are all here, and they are not seen in a good light. Sixty-five-year-old Jep Gambardella, indolent and disenchanted, his eyes permanently imbued with gin and tonic, watches this parade of hollow, doomed, powerful yet depressed humanity. All the effort of life, disguised as specious, distracted entertainment. A dizzying moral atony. And, behind it, Rome in summer. Stunningly beautiful and indifferent. Like a dead diva.