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During the 30th Sarajevo Film Festival (Aug. 16 to 23), CineLink, the festival’s industry program, will present its work-in-progress showcase. This includes eight feature-length fiction and one documentary film in the production or post-production stages from Southeast Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.

Among those competing are Alisa Kovalenko, who was in competition in Sarajevo last year for “We Will Not Fade Away,” which also screened at the Berlinale; Adrian Sitaru, named best director at Locarno with “Best Intentions“; Tarik Aktas, who took best emerging director at Locarno with “Dead Horse Nebula”; Ralitza Petrova, winner of the Golden Leopard for best film at Locarno with “Godless“; Maya Vitkova, who competed at Sundance with “Viktoria“; and Ana Urushadze, who took best first feature at Locarno for “Scary Mother.”

The projects will be presented to funders, sales agents, distributors, broadcasters and festival programmers with the aim of driving forward their completion and boosting their distribution chances.

Nine feature-length projects in the CineLink Work in Progress selection of Sarajevo Film Festival include the new feature from Ukrainian filmmaker Alisa Kovalenko.

Kovalenko will present Frontline, a documentary filmed during her four-month stint in the Ukrainian army following the increased Russian invasion in February 2022.

Scroll down for the full list of Work in Progress projects

The project has previously participated in Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival’s Inspiration Forum, and the IDFA Forum, both in 2022.

It is produced by Kasia Kuczynska for Poland’s Haka Films, with Monica Hellstrom of Strom Pictures as co-producer.

Kovalenko has previously directed...

Exclusive: Dekanalog has picked up North American rights to the Sarajevo competition title Men of Deeds, the latest feature from Romanian filmmaker Paul Negoescu.

Men of Deeds played Making Waves, NYC’s annual festival dedicated to showcasing contemporary Romanian contemporary cinema, on April 2nd, with Negoescu and his Director of Photography Ana Drăghici in attendance. Dekanalog will release the film later in the year.

The film is up for 10 Romanian Academy Awards this year, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Screenplay. The story follows Ilie, a village policeman who enjoys an easy life. His passivity during a series of violent events soon turns him into an accomplice to murder. Tension accumulates in the village, forcing Ilie to make a final decision.

The official film synopsis reads: A middle-aged police chief goes on with his job and modest life in a small town, dreaming of having an orchard, managing regular...

Paul Negoescu’s fourth feature, “Men of Deeds,” which world premieres in competition Sunday at the Sarajevo Film Festival, is at first glance a departure from the Romanian director’s previous work. Set in the rural region of Bucovina, it’s a world removed from the swanky bars and bistros of his last film, the Bucharest-set “The Story of a Summer Lover.”

The film follows llie (Iulian Postelnicu), a small-town police chief who hopes to settle into a modest, comfortable life. A man of low expectations and dubious morals, he sets his sights on a small plot of land that’s up for sale — an orchard in the countryside where he imagines he can make a fresh start.

Nothing, however, goes according to plan. Before long Ilie is being thwarted by bad choices and haunted by past misdeeds, leading to an inevitable reckoning after a series of violent events compels...

Boutique German sales agent Patra Spanou Film has acquired international sales rights to “Men of Deeds,” the fourth feature by Romanian director Paul Negoescu (“Two Lottery Tickets”), which will be presented in a closed screening for industry guests on June 24 at the Transilvania Film Festival.

The film tells the story of llie (Iulian Postelnicu), a small-town police chief who wants to build a modest, comfortable life for himself but makes all the wrong choices. Middle-aged and alienated, he feels the need to be a part of something – to build an orchard, even a home. But his past combines with a series of violent events to push him toward a dark place, where he’s desperate to find solutions in his search for justice.

“Men of Deeds” is produced by Anamaria Antoci and co-produced by Poli Angelova. Production companies are Papillon Film, Tangaj Production, Screening Emotions and Avanpost Production.

Negoescu said...

Bulgarian director Ralitza Petrova, who won Locarno Film Festival’s Golden Leopard in 2016 with “Godless,” is readying her second feature, “Lust,” which will be presented during Sarajevo Film Festival’s CineLink Co-production Market over the coming week.

Produced by Poli Angelova and Petrova for Aporia Filmworks, in collaboration with Screening Emotions, the project has been backed by the Bulgarian National Film Center and Danish Film Institute, with Copenhagen-based Snowglobe on board as well, reuniting with the director following their collaboration on “Godless.”

The film will focus on fortysomething Lilian, forced to return to her native Bulgaria after becoming her estranged father’s heir. She wants nothing to do with his legacy, but a near-death experience delays her departure, forcing Lilian to address her life-long fear of commitment.

“All the characters interacting throughout the film are more or less incapable of receiving and reciprocating love. But there is a possibility for an awakening,...

The story of the director’s debut feature follows the trials and tribulations of an old, senile villager after his house is burgled. Originally written as a short, Lament for the Silent Fool is now destined to be the debut feature by Bulgarian director Dimitar Kutmanov. The project is being staged by producer Poli Angelova through Screening Emotions, a production company that has made a name for itself with various independent projects, and is expected to wrap post-production before the end of 2020. The screenplay, written by Kutmanov himself, follows an old man (Mihail Iliykov) who lives in a virtually deserted mountain village. After his house is burgled, he will drift around in search of help, but this endeavour will expose him to new forms of cruelty and pain. Brought to the limits of physical and moral resistance, the old man is about to lose the last thing that he has.

Israeli title Fig Tree among selection.

The Sarajevo Film Festival (Aug 11-18) has revealed its line-up of Work in Progress titles set to participate at the event’s industry strand CineLink.

The 10 titles include Balkan projects, as well as several from further afield, such as Alamork Davidian’s Fig Tree, which recently won an award at Jerusalem Film Festival’s Pitch Point competition, and Reem Saleh’s Lebanon-Egypt doc What Comes Around.

The projects will be presented to around 40 industry delegates, and a jury consisting of Paolo Bertolin (Venice Film Festival), Paz Lazaro (Berlin International Film Festival), Hedi Zardi (LuxBox), Petra Gobel (The Post Republic) and Serkan Yildirim (Trt) will award three prizes: the Post Republic Award (€50,000 in kind), the CineLink Restart Award (€20,000 in kind), and the Turkish National Radio Television Award (€30,000 in cash).

Sarajevo’s head of industry Jovan Marjanovic commented: “The CineLink Work in Progress strand has proved to be incredibly effective for both the...

Sofia Meetings industry winners include UK project The Tentmaster’s Daughter; The Expendables 4 heads to Bulgaria.

Ralitza Petrova’s Godless was this year’s winner of the ‘Sofia City of Film’ Grand Prix at the 21st edition of the Sofia International Film Festival (Siff).

Petrova’s feature debut, which won the Golden Leopard for best film and the best actress Silver Leopard in Locarno last year, received the award for best Bulgarian feature film.

Petrova also won Turkey’s Yapim-lab young producer award for her second feature Dust which she presented with producer Poli Angelova as a project at the Sofia Meetings.

This is the third year in a row that a local Bulgarian film has won Siff’s international competition grand prix following Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov’s The Lesson in 2015 and Eliza Petkova’s Zhaleika in 2016.

Local Bulgarian films also featured among the other prize winners this year: Grozeva and Valchanov’s second film Glory...