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Al Jazeera Balkans and Sarajevo Film Festival Partnership

Beginning with this year, Al Jazeera Balkans is a partner of the Sarajevo Film Festival, with a special focus on documentary film.

SFF has carefully followed the development of Al Jazeera Balkans as part of the global Al Jazeera network, which has quickly grown into one of the largest and most professional media companies in the world.

The establishment of Al Jazeera Balkans is an asset to the media scene in the region as already in their first year their professionalism has earned them the reputation of a media house that can be trusted.

Mirsad Purivatra, director of the Sarajevo Film Festival, has stated that, “The partnership between Sarajevo Film Festival and Al Jazeera Balkans is a logical link between companies invested in furthering and rising standards in regional documentary production and I think that this kind of cooperation is more than welcome because it improves both the quality of our documentary programme and also of the Festival as a whole”.

This cooperation involves, among other things, a special jury prize for a documentary film in the competition programme with the financial award provided by Al Jazeera Balkans.

According to Tarik Đođić, director of Al Jazeera Balkans, “The Al Jazeera global news network holds documentary film and its production in great regard. Given that we aim to provide our viewers with a broad selection of quality documentary films that thematize and analyse in detail subjects ranging from history, to science, to politics, to art, to travel, Al Jazeera Balkans—as part of this global network—has entered into cooperation with the Sarajevo Film Festival. We believe that this year’s cooperation will be successful and that it will be the beginning of a long-term partnership”.

Documentary films are not shown on the Al Jazeera news channels but rather on the special Al Jazeera Documentary channel. Al Jazeera Balkans is the first regional news channel which in addition to the news also broadcasts documentary films and works on commissioning and acquiring films that cover various regional subjects.

Sarajevo Film Festival is especially pleased at the fact that Al Jazeera Balkans has shown readiness in financing the production of documentary films that treat subjects relevant to the entire region.