The Resilience of Bosnian Cinema and Its Global Stars

By the ULTIMATE Sarajevo Editorial Team

The socialist era, Bosna Film and Sutjeska Film (1945–1990)

After the Second World War, film-making in Bosnia and Herzegovina was set up in state-run companies: Bosna Film, founded in 1947, and later Sutjeska Film and Studio Film. Early films followed socialist realism and the great partisan stories, since many of Yugoslavia’s best-known wartime battles were fought on Bosnian ground.

In the 1960s and 1970s Bosnian cinema turned to poetic realism and psychological drama, and the 1980s became a golden age for Sarajevo film: raw, authentic and emotionally charged work that won over festival juries abroad.

War, resilience and the modern era (1990s–present)

The war of 1992–1995 devastated the country, but not its creative spirit. Through the siege of Sarajevo film-makers kept filming at great risk to themselves, and the festival they founded in 1995 became the start of a rebirth.

Since the war, Bosnian cinema has looked at trauma, reconciliation and transition with rare honesty, and it has won some of the highest honours in world cinema: an Academy Award, the Golden Bear and the Grand Jury Prize in Berlin, and a prize at Cannes.

Must-watch films: the pre-war classics

To understand Bosnian cinema, see the golden age before the war, the films that came out of it and the acclaimed work of today.

• Do You Remember Dolly Bell? (Sjećaš li se Dolly Bell?, 1981): Emir Kusturica’s first feature, a tender coming-of-age story of youth, romance and the pull of the West in 1960s Sarajevo, won the Golden Lion for best first work in Venice.
• When Father Was Away on Business (Otac na službenom putu, 1985): directed by Kusturica and written by Abdulah Sidran, it sees the suspicion of the early 1950s through a small boy’s eyes. It won the Palme d’Or at Cannes and an Oscar nomination.
• Kuduz (1989): Ademir Kenović’s raw drama of an outsider’s turbulent life and tragic fate defined the gritty realism of late pre-war Bosnian cinema.

Must-watch films: the post-war and modern masterpieces

• No Man’s Land (Ničija zemlja, 2001): Danis Tanović’s darkly satirical anti-war film traps a Bosniak and a Bosnian Serb soldier in one trench between the lines. It won best screenplay at Cannes and the Oscar for best foreign language film.
• Grbavica (Esma’s Secret, 2006): Jasmila Žbanić’s powerful first feature follows a mother shielding her daughter from the truth about the wartime violence she suffered. It won the Golden Bear in Berlin.
• An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker (2013): Tanović cast a Roma family to re-enact their own fight for urgent medical care. It won the Grand Jury Prize in Berlin, and Nazif Mujić the Silver Bear for best actor.
• Quo Vadis, Aida? (2020): Žbanić’s devastating drama follows a United Nations translator trying to save her family in the July days of 1995 at Srebrenica. It won the European Film Awards for best film, director and actress, and an Oscar nomination.

The iconic film stars

The golden age of the Sarajevo stage and its resilient successors have produced actors of great weight, range and vulnerability.

• Mustafa Nadarević (1943–2020): one of the region’s greatest actors, with gravitas and brilliant comic timing, from When Father Was Away on Business and Glembajevi to his much-loved Izet in the comedy series Lud, zbunjen, normalan.
• Miraj Grbić: a household name across the Balkans for comedy, who moved on to Hollywood with roles in Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, Fast X and television series.
• Senad Bašić: a cornerstone of Bosnian stage and screen who blends sharp satire with melancholy, in films such as Perfect Circle (1997), Summer in the Golden Valley (2003) and Bosnian Pot (2023).
• Emir Hadžihafizbegović: one of the most prolific and awarded actors in the region, known for his fierce intensity; he won the Orizzonti award for best actor in Venice in 2014 for These Are the Rules.
• Jasna Đuričić: the Serbian actress whose towering performance as Aida in Quo Vadis, Aida? won the European Film Award for best actress and international acclaim.
• Davor Dujmović (1969–1999): unforgettable as Perhan in Time of the Gypsies (1988), one of the most naturally gifted young actors of his generation, who died far too young.

Contemporary and cross-border talents

As the industry opened up, several Bosnian actors crossed into European and Hollywood productions.

• Zana Marjanović: chosen by Angelina Jolie for the leading role in her wartime drama In the Land of Blood and Honey (2011).
• Feđa Štukan: actor and pilot, whose charisma has taken him into international productions such as A Perfect Day (2015), with Benicio del Toro, and European and American thriller series.
• Goran Kostić: the Sarajevo-born actor, based in Britain, of striking, complex roles in Hannibal Rising, Taken and In the Land of Blood and Honey.

The Sarajevo Film Festival (SFF)

The Sarajevo Film Festival was founded in 1995, in the last months of the war and the siege of Sarajevo, as an act of cultural resistance: audiences crossed a city under fire to watch films together.

Three decades on, it is the largest film festival in south-east Europe and the launch pad for Balkan cinema. Its prize, the Heart of Sarajevo, goes to the best feature, documentary and short films, and since 2019 its short-film winners can go forward for the Oscars. Its industry programme, CineLink, connects the region’s film-makers with co-producers and distributors.

Every August it brings great names to Sarajevo: Robert De Niro, Morgan Freeman, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, Mads Mikkelsen and Willem Dafoe have all been guests.

Our advice: book a room early for festival week, and take in at least one open-air screening in the old town.

Sarajevo Film Festival →   The festival: the back story →   The open-air cinemas →   Kinoteka BiH →

The Hollywood diaspora

Bosnian-born film-makers and actors have left a lasting mark on Hollywood and international cinema.

• Danis Tanović: the director and writer who put post-war Bosnian cinema on the world map. Beyond his Oscar for No Man’s Land he has made international films such as Triage, with Colin Farrell, and The Postcard Killings, with Jeffrey Dean Morgan.
• Aleksandar Hemon: the Sarajevo-born writer who settled in the United States and became an acclaimed novelist, then co-wrote The Matrix Resurrections (2021) with Lana Wachowski and David Mitchell.
• Ivana Miličević: born in Sarajevo and raised in the United States, she starred as Carrie Hopewell in Banshee, was a Bond girl in Casino Royale and appeared in The 100.

Sarajevo on film →   Sarajevo at the cinema: where to watch a film →   Balkan Cinema: our long read on the whole region →

Questions and answers