Bosnian films I DREAM, I LOSE, DEAR ORCHID, and the Bosnian co-productions OUR FATHER and MY NOTES ON MARS will be screened at the 32nd Belgrade Author Film Festival (FAF), taking place from 20 to 27 November 2026.
The short fiction film I DREAM, I LOSE, directed by Elma Tataragić, will be screened in the Brave Balkan selection. The film follows a woman whose life unfolds on the boundary between dreams and reality, in a space where the two worlds constantly intertwine. One day in Sarajevo, she decides to break away from her routine and confront her greatest fear – loneliness. The film stars Alena Džebo, Alban Ukaj, Esma Alagić, Hena Omerović and Silva Hadžiredžepović, and is produced by SCCA/pro.ba Sarajevo.
The short film DEAR ORCHID, directed by Hana Selena Sokolović, will also be screened in the Brave Balkan selection. The film is a co-production between Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia and the Netherlands. Guided by a wartime diary written by her older sister as a child during the Siege of Sarajevo, the filmmaker retraces the journey into exile taken by her two sisters. The film explores how memories are preserved, inherited and shaped through landscapes, absence and sisterhood. Hana Selena Sokolović is credited as the film’s director, cinematographer, editor, composer and producer.
The festival’s Main Programme will feature OUR FATHER, a feature fiction film directed by Goran Stanković and co-produced by Serbia, Italy, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Bosnian co-producer is Srđan Šarenac, representing the production company Novi Film.
The film follows Dejan, who arrives at a monastery-based rehabilitation community, where he is welcomed by the charismatic Father Branko and assigned a guardian, Mionica, a former addict. In a community governed by strict rules, punishments and brutal treatment methods, Dejan soon becomes Branko’s favourite. However, after footage of violence within the community is made public, Dejan, as Branko’s right-hand man, faces a dilemma between remaining loyal to the man and the system that have given him a new purpose and following his own conscience.
All three films were presented in this year’s BH Film Programme, held as part of the 32nd Sarajevo Film Festival, and will continue their festival journey with screenings before regional audiences.
MY NOTES ON MARS, directed by Hungarian filmmaker Lili Horvát, will be screened in the Special Screening programme. This international co-production features Mackenzie Davis and Rupert Friend in the leading roles. The film follows Margot, a brilliant young scientist who mysteriously disappears while hiking with her husband and reappears weeks later, on the day of her own memorial service, with no memory of her life apart from her research on Mars, which she desperately wants to find and destroy. The Bosnian co-producer is Obala Art Centar Sarajevo.
For more than three decades, the Belgrade Author Film Festival has brought together notable works of contemporary world and regional cinema, providing a platform for auteur cinema, emerging filmmaking voices and diverse artistic approaches. The participation of Bosnian films in this year’s festival represents another opportunity to promote Bosnian cinema and the creative work of filmmakers from Bosnia and Herzegovina.
