The Sarajevo Film Festival will honor Oscar-nominated actor Woody Harrelson at its upcoming 32nd edition later this month.
Harrelson will receive the festival’s Honorary Heart of Sarajevo Award in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the film industry and acting career, following in the footsteps of recent recipients such as Stellan Skarsgård, Paolo Sorrentino, Meg Ryan, Alexander Payne and Lynne Ramsay.
“Woody Harrelson is one of those actors you believe in even in the most improbable roles, while at the same time you can easily imagine him as someone you might spend time with every day,” said Sarajevo director Jovan Marjanović.
“That remarkable ease of performance is, in fact, one of the hardest qualities to achieve on screen, yet he delivers it film after film. His talent, charisma, and boldness serve as an inspiration to many future generations. It is our great honor to present him with the Honorary Heart of Sarajevo.”
Harrelson has historic links to the festival as co-star of Michael Winterbottom’s 1997 film Welcome to Sarajevo, which premiered at Cannes and then also screened at the 3rd Sarajevo Film Festival, less than two years after the end of the siege of the city.
The film – a powerful examination of war in Bosnia in the mid-1990s and the role of journalists in its media coverage – will screen in the festival once again as part of the open air programme. Harrelson played ego-driven American reporter Jimmy Flynn.
Harrelson has earned three Academy Award nominations, including Best Actor for The People vs. Larry Flynt and Best Supporting Actor for The Messenger and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, and starred in Ruben Östlund’s Palme d’Or winner Triangle of Sadness.
He next leads Apple TV’s Brothers alongside Matthew McConaughey, premiering September 23, and stars opposite Kristen Stewart in Quentin Dupieux’s Full Phil, which premiered at Cannes this year. He recently wrapped Netflix’s The Cackling of the Dodos with Sam Rockwell and is producing a documentary on Austin’s iconic Armadillo World Headquarters.
Harrelson wrote, directed and starred in Lost in London, the first feature film shot in a single continuous take and broadcast live to theaters.
An Emmy Award winner for his iconic portrayal of Woody Boyd on Cheers, his television credits also include True Detective and The White House Plumbers. He has also distinguished himself on stage as an actor, writer and director, starring in the Broadway revival of The Rainmaker, the West End’s On An Average Day and Night of the Iguana, and directing his own off Broadway production Bullet for Adolf, which he cowrote with Frankie Hyman.
In other Sarajevo news, the festival announced over the weekend that it will also be laying on a special 25th anniversary screening of a restored 4K version of Danis Tanovíc’s 2001 Oscar-winning feature No Man’s Land exploring the absurdity of war through the prism of the Bosnian War.
The Sarajevo Film Festival runs from August 14 to 21.
