The Sarajevo Film Festival has launched a new program dedicated to the legacy of Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr, who died this year.
The Béla Tarr in Sarajevo Tribute program will focus on the work of former students from the Film Factory in Sarajevo, an innovative educational initiative set up by Tarr in 2013.
The lineup this year includes Valdimar Jóhannsson’s “Lamb,” which won the Un Certain Regard’s Prize of Originality at Cannes Film Festival.
It also includes Bianca Lucas’ “Love Dog,” which was at Locarno Film Festival, where it got a special mention in the best first feature contest.
Additionally, there is Pilar Palomero’s “Motherhood,” which won best leading performance for Carla Quílez at San Sebastián Film Festival.
Jovan Marjanović, director of the Sarajevo Film Festival, said, “The selection reflects careers that have since taken these filmmakers to many of the world’s leading festivals, including Cannes, San Sebastián, Locarno, Rotterdam and Clermont-Ferrand. Rather than revealing a single aesthetic or cinematic school, their films reflect an educational philosophy that encouraged every filmmaker to discover a distinctly personal artistic language.”
Films in the program:
CENOTE (TS’ONOT)
Japan, Mexico, 2019, 75 min.
Director: Kaori Oda
Cenotes are sources of water that in ancient Mayan civilization were said to connect the real world and the afterlife. The past and present of the people living in and around them intersect, and distant memories echo throughout immersive scenes of light and darkness.
LAMB (DÝRIÐ)
Iceland, Sweden, Poland, 2021, 106 min.
Director: Valdimar Jóhannsson
Cast: Noomi Rapace, Hilmir Snær Guðnason, Björn Hlynur Haraldsson, Ingvar Sigurðsson
A childless couple in rural Iceland make an alarming discovery one day in their sheep barn. They soon face the consequences of defying the will of nature in this dark and atmospheric folktale.
LOVE DOG
Poland, Mexico, U.S., 2022, 84 min.
Director: Bianca Lucas
Cast: John Dicks, TJ Tarver, Becca Begnaud, Corinne Bordelon, Brooke Keel Bullock, Ernie Schaeffer
After finishing a job on a Texas oil rig, John returns to his hometown in Mississippi, where he will confront not only his own repressed trauma, but that of a society grieving dying American myths.
MOTHERHOOD (LA MATERNAL)
Spain, 2022, 120 min.
Director: Pilar Palomero
Cast: Carla Quílez, Ángela Cervantes, Rubén Martínez, Pepe Lorente, Jordan Dumes, Olga Hueso, Gal-la Sabasté, Neus Pàmies
At the age of 14, Carla is wild and rebellious. Living in a modest restaurant on the outskirts of town with her young single mother, she skips school and passes the time with her friend Efraín. When a social worker realizes Carla is five months pregnant, she is taken to La Maternal, a center for teenage mothers, to live with other young women like herself. Together with their babies, they will learn to cope with a new adult life for which they have had no time to prepare.
SOIL AND WINGS (TOPRAK VE KANATLAR)
Serbia, North Macedonia, 2025, 77 min.
Director: Stefan Malešević
In the North Macedonian village of Kanatlar, Ayten and Erdoğan raise their children, balancing the 800-year-old Bektashi Sufi teachings with the struggles of modern life. In this tobacco-growing valley, a Turkish-Muslim community devoted to faith, family and tradition allows gender equality to flourish quietly, rooted in the belief that all beings are equal.
TRAVESIAS
Mexico, 2021, 108 min.
Director: Sergio Flores Thorija
Cast: Alejadra Carrillo, Victor García, Jaqueline Coronel, Jonathan Durán, José Sampeiro, Trapitilian, Daniel López
Alejandra and Víctor come from completely different backgrounds, and live in a city that is artificially divided by a wall: Tijuana and San Diego. She works in a beauty salon, while he studies business and is starting his own company. Following a phone call and an altercation in a club, the two have to embark on a journey to the other side of their respective borders. In this way, very soon it becomes evident how those kilometers of distance between their places of origin, dictate the way in which both face their lives.
WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU
Serbia, Belgium, 2019, 80 min.
Director: Marina Radmilac
Cast: Strike Lucicky, Denis Lavant, George Ilich, Marija Šević, Lidija Andonov, Dušan Vesić, Sofia Dimich
A black-and-white psychedelic punk drama about one man, one city, one madness. Alexander is an expat returning from the Brussels to Belgrade for the restitution of his family’s property and with the intent of making an opera based on Shakespeare’s “Richard III.” While trying to mend his strained relationship with his older brother, he pursues the project with maniacal determination all while going from bar to bar, rediscovering the charm of the city and its women and shooting his memories with a Super 8 camera. As pressure mounts, so does his obsession with his anarchist psychiatrist as he faces mental breakdown.
FIREWOOD (LLENYA)
Spain, Portugal, 2025, 17 min.
Director: Manel Raga Raga
Cast: Vasile Burtic, Manuel Raga Raga
In my grandparents’ home, all the clocks are stopped.
NAVAL GAYS
United Kingdom, 2022, 12 min.
Director: Grant Gulczynski
Cast: Luis Amália
A filmmaker has low self-esteem. He hires an actor to play himself, a filmmaker with low self-esteem, making a gay film about sex, the body and himself, inspired by the filmmaker’s sex, body and self.
THE BRIDGE (LE PONT)
France, 2025, 22 min.
Director: Léa Triboulet
The filmmaker unexpectedly came upon the bridge where her mother died and decided to confront this place with her camera. The process of filming and editing became one of observation, contemplation and confrontation. Her mother inhabits every landscape she films. Does a place not retain any memory of what happened there?
