News

The Sarajevo International Film Festival has unveiled the nominees for its second annual TV awards with 17 series from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Kosovo and Slovenia represented across the nominees.

The local series up for awards are: Advokado, Besa 2, Block 27, Black Wedding, Strange Kind of Loves, Dolina rož, Awake, Lenin’s Park, Crazy, Confused, Normal, Underneath 2, Mrkomir I, Bad Blood, The Last Socialist Artefact, United Brothers, Killers of My Father 5, The Silence and Time of Evil.

This year, the award categories have expanded to include drama series and comedy and winners will be honored with the fest’s lauded Heart of Sarajevo award, a prize usually given to the festival’s competition winner.

The Sarajevo Film Festival established the awards for TV series last year, with the aim of promoting and showcasing the highest quality regional television series in the past 12 months to promote their international placement.

Sarajevo’s Avant Premieres section broadens scope and includes workshop on audience development and innovation

Launched two years ago, Sarajevo Film Festival’s Avant Premieres is a section that connects the festival’s film programme and industry section.

Presenting upcoming releases of local films, it includes public screenings of potenital box office hits, and industry screenings of trailers for new films for distributors and exhibitors.

This year, the section will introduce the Audience Development & Innovation Lab (Aug 18-19) for regional exhibitors, organized in collaboration with Europa Cinemas.

The workshop will focus on programming, marketing, audience development and social media, and will be led by Duncan Carson, marketing, communications and events manager at the UK-based Independent Cinema Office (Ico).

The goal is to strengthen the network of regional cinemas and to provide a platform where they can share strengths, weaknesses and examples of best practices.

Public screenings

The public screenings of Avant Premieres include three new films, and a...

Directed by: Branko Schmidt

Written by: Branko Schmidt

Featuring: Rene Bitorajac

It wouldn’t be a proper festival if there wasn't at least one film that I just didn’t enjoy. In truth, that’s partially why festivals are always so exciting: There’s an element of surprise inherent to each screening. Unfortunately, Vegetarian Cannibal is one of the bad surprises of Fantastic Fest. From the reactions of everyone in the theater (including one man who fell asleep), I’m guessing this wasn’t a positive experience for most. While I enjoy challenging films with difficult subject matter, I don’t enjoy boring ones, and Vegetarian Cannibal is really only challenging because of how much I wanted to leave my seat.

Vegetarian Cannibal does have an interesting premise, but unfortunately it just does not follow through. In Croatia, Dr. Danko Babic (Rene Bitorajac), a gynecologist hired to perform illegal abortions for prostitutes in the mafia,...

The world premiere of FilmDistrict’s Red Dawn reboot will close The Austin-based genre fest today. Well, if you didn’t already hear, Lithuanian sci-fi romantic thriller Vanishing Waves was the big winner by picking up four awards including Best Feature, Best Director (Kristina Buozyte), Best Screenplay (Bruno Samper, Buozyte), and Best Actress (Jurga Jutaite).

Have you ever dreamed of being inside the head of another person – a beloved one or your rival ? Have you ever wished to experience the ideal relationship, where two minds come into total fusion? “Vanishing waves” – a sci-fi melodrama. Following solid scientific experiment, based on the neural transfer, a young inhibited man will live an astonishing journey in the comatose woman anonymous mind. This contemporary tale is exploring the nature of desire by exposing links and contradictions between the human body and the mind.

Here Comes the Devil, Adrian Garcia Bogliano‘s homage to 70s horror films,...

Photo by David Hill

Fantastic Fest is almost at its end, which means it’s of course time for the one and only Fantastic Awards!

Now I could waste your time for a few paragraphs on the apparent ridiculousness of holding an Award Ceremony at the half-way point of a festival, but instead I’m going to save my tirades for more important matters, and just assume that Festival Organizers worldwide know what they’re doing. What I Will give you though is a list of this years Award Winners!

As you look through the list of winners, you may want to take note of a few key films and add them to your “To Screen” list. One of them is Adrian Garcia Bogliano’s homage to 70’s horror film’s Here Comes The Devil, which became the first film in Fantastic Fest history to completely Sweep the Horror Features...

Fantastic Fest has announced the 2012 Fantastic Fest Award winners. With all the great films screening at the Fest, they had quite a time choosing the best and most striking films of the festival.

Look for more coverage from Travis Keune in the coming days. Check out his Fantastic Fest review of Frankenweenie here and Dredd 3D here.

Audience Award (Presented by Maxwell Locke & Ritter)

I Declare War (dir. Robert Wilson & Jason Lapeyre)

Amd “Next Wave” Spotlight Competition

Best Picture: Flicker (dir. Patrik Eklund)

Best Director: Charles de Lauzirika (Crave)

Best Screenplay: Max Porcelijn (Plan C)

Best Actor: Michael Eklund (Errors of the Human Body)

Best Actress: Alina Levshin (Combat Girls)

Fantastic Features

Best Picture: Vanishing Waves (dir. Kristina Buozyte)

Best Director: Kristina Buozyte (Vanishing Waves)

Best Screenplay: Bruno Samper, Kristina Buozyte (Vanishing Waves)

Best Actor: Rene Bitorajac (Vegetarian Cannibal)

Best Actress: Jurga Jutaite (Vanishing Waves)

Horror Features

Best Picture: Here Comes the Devil (dir.

One of the greatest film festivals on the face of the planet, Fantastic Fest in Austin Texas, has unveiled their award winners for 2012, and it's quite an impressive list to say the least. Read on to see who's taking home some fantastic memories!

From the Press Release

Fantastic Fest is thrilled to announce this year's Fantastic Fest Award winners. It's a terrible task to pick favorites and single out any of the magnificent films that played at this year's festival, but our esteemed team of jurors have done the nearly impossible and chosen the best and most striking films of the festival.

The audience awards are presented by accounting firm Maxwell Locke & Ritter, who provided the certified tabulation of ballots this year and are the exclusive accounting sponsor of Fantastic Fest. Amd is the presenter of the prestigious "Next Wave" Awards, which honors emerging filmmakers. The winner of the "Next...

Oil slicked waves have the hypnotic ability to be both beautiful and revolting. Without context it would be a brilliant sight. Unfortunately we know the destruction they bring about on their journey to expand and remain on top. Vegetarian Cannibal is a culture skimmed from those same sheened waves. On the surface, Dr. Danko Babic (played like a more heartfelt Patrick Bateman by Rene Bitorajac) is a top gynecologist, the definition of excellence in his field. He delivers life into the world and aborts it daily at the fertility clinic he stomps around in. His impulses are driven by professionalism, sympathy and most importantly, money. With cash on the table, Babic death-rolls like a gator to guarantee that chunk-o-change goes home with him. His free time is spent using drugs, having sex, attending dogfights and drumming to synthpop. He’s a self driven cyclone on a destructive course fueled by greed over ethics. Things...

Just a heads up, this trailer for “Vegetarian Cannibal” might cast a dark shadow over the rest of your day. Thought you should know that going it. This video is full of what appear to be very late abortions, dog fighting, dirty sex, and a bunch of creepy gentlemen. You know, all sorts of general nastiness. Hailing from Croatia, this is already garnering comparisons to “A Serbian Film”, and from the looks of things, that seems rather appropriate. If nothing else, this is a definite front-runner in the most-fucked-up-movie-of-the-year sweepstakes. Dr Danko Babić (Rene Bitorajac) is a successful gynecologist in his mid-30s. Although clearly an expert in his field, he is an unscrupulously ambitious and utterly despicable person. Babić’s best friend is chief police inspector Ilija (Leon Lučev), with whom he takes part in sport-betting scams, and who leads him to ‘controversial businessman’ Jedinko (Emir Hadžihafizbegović). Jedinko deals...

Laced with explicit sex, late term abortions and animal violence Branko Schmidt's new Croatian effort Vegetarian Cannibal may very well be this year's A Serbian Film in terms of its willingness to push hot button topics to the extreme in the name of social commentary. Cineuropa describes the story like this:Dr Danko Babić (Rene Bitorajac) is a successful gynecologist in his mid-30s. Although clearly an expert in his field, he is an unscrupulously ambitious and utterly despicable person. Babić's best friend is chief police inspector Ilija (Leon Lučev), with whom he takes part in sport-betting scams, and who leads him to 'controversial businessman' Jedinko (Emir Hadžihafizbegović). Jedinko deals in hard drugs and high-end prostitution (naturally, with police support), and needs a gynecologist to take...