Sarajevo on screen
Sarajevo Films
Sarajevo on film — from the 1980s bazaar to the siege and after. A working index of the films that took the city as their subject.
2020s
2 films
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2023
Una Gunjak · Bosnia and Herzegovina
Excursion (Ekskurzija)
Una Gunjak's 2023 film set in contemporary Sarajevo — a teenage girl's lie spirals out of control. Bosnia's entry for the 96th Academy Awards.
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2020
Jasmila Žbanić · Bosnia and Herzegovina
Quo Vadis, Aida?
Jasmila Žbanić's 2020 Oscar-nominated film about the Srebrenica genocide, seen through a translator caught between the UN and the killers — by the Sarajevo director of Grbavica.
2010s
11 films
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2017
Ersan Bayraktar · Turkey
Sarajevo March (Saraybosna Yürüyüşü)
Ersan Bayraktar's 2017 Turkish documentary — ten survivors walk through Sarajevo twenty years after the siege, the signs of the war visible in the streets.
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2016
Gianluca Loffredo, Andrea Postiglione · France
No Smoking in Sarajevo
A 2016 documentary about Zabranjeno Pušenje — 'No Smoking', the band that defined Sarajevo's New Primitivism — told by its three founders.
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2015
Seda Eğridere · Turkey / United Kingdom
Seasons of War
Seda Eğridere's 2015 debut feature, shot on location in Sarajevo in July 2014 and scheduled to premiere at the Sarajevo Film Festival — a war romance filmed where the war was.
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2014
Srđan Koljević · Serbia
The Man Who Defended Gavrilo Princip (Branio sam Mladu Bosnu)
Srđan Koljević's 2014 courtroom drama about Rudolf Zistler, the Austrian lawyer who defended Gavrilo Princip and the Young Bosnians at their trial.
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2014
Andreas Prochaska · Austria
Sarajevo (The Assassination)
Andreas Prochaska's 2014 Austrian TV film about the assassination of Franz Ferdinand — the events of 28 June 1914, dramatised in the city where they happened.
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2014
Various (13 directors) · France / Bosnia and Herzegovina
Bridges of Sarajevo (Les Ponts de Sarajevo)
A 2014 anthology of thirteen short films, one per bridge over the Miljacka — Sarajevo's history read through the structures that span its river.
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2012
Sergio Castellitto · Italy
Twice Born (Venuto al mondo)
Sergio Castellitto's 2012 adaptation of Margaret Mazzantini's novel — a mother returns to Sarajevo to tell her teenage son the story of his conception during the siege.
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2012
Aida Begić · Bosnia and Herzegovina
Children of Sarajevo (Djeca)
Aida Begić's 2012 film about a young woman raising her younger brother, both orphaned by the siege — Sarajevo's war children, grown up and trying to live.
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2011
Angelina Jolie · United States
In the Land of Blood and Honey
Angelina Jolie's 2011 directing debut, a love story between a Bosniak woman and a Serb man across the front lines — filmed in Bosnia, in Bosnian.
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2010
Larysa Kondracki · United States / Canada / Germany
The Whistleblower
Larysa Kondracki's 2010 film, based on Kathryn Bolkovac's true story — a Nebraska police officer who uncovered a sex-trafficking scandal while serving in post-war Sarajevo.
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2010
Jasmila Žbanić · Bosnia and Herzegovina
On the Path (Na putu)
Jasmila Žbanić's 2010 film — a Sarajevo flight attendant and her partner, and the pressure a radical turn puts on their ordinary city life. Screened in competition at Berlin.
2000s
4 films
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2006
Jasmila Žbanić · Bosnia and Herzegovina
Grbavica — The Land of My Dreams
Jasmila Žbanić's 2006 Golden Bear winner, set in the real Sarajevo neighbourhood that became a symbol of the war's crimes.
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2003
Srđan Vuletić · Bosnia and Herzegovina
Summer in the Golden Valley (Ljeto u zlatnoj dolini)
Srđan Vuletić's 2003 film of a Sarajevo schoolboy pulled into the city's underground to repay his dead father's debt — produced by Ademir Kenović.
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2003
Dino Mustafić · Bosnia and Herzegovina
Remake
Dino Mustafić's 2003 debut — the same actor plays a father in Sarajevo 1941 and his son in Sarajevo 1992, two wars in the same city, fifty years apart.
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2001
Danis Tanović · Bosnia and Herzegovina
No Man's Land (Ničija zemlja)
Danis Tanović's 2001 Academy Award winner — a Bosniak and a Serb trapped in a trench between the lines, with a wounded man lying on a bouncing mine.
1990s
7 films
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1998
David Attwood · United Kingdom / United States
Shot Through the Heart
A 1998 BBC/HBO film about two Sarajevo childhood friends who become snipers on opposite sides of the siege — based on a true story, Peabody Award winner.
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1997
Michael Winterbottom · United Kingdom
Welcome to Sarajevo
Michael Winterbottom's 1997 drama about foreign journalists in besieged Sarajevo, based on ITN correspondent Michael Nicholson's true story of smuggling an orphaned girl out of the city.
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1997
Ademir Kenović · Bosnia and Herzegovina
The Perfect Circle (Savršeni krug)
Ademir Kenović's 1997 drama of two orphaned children and an alcoholic poet in besieged Sarajevo — directed by a man who stayed in the city through the war.
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1997
Gerardo Herrero · Spain
Comanche Territory (Territorio Comanche)
Gerardo Herrero's 1997 film, from Arturo Pérez-Reverte's novel of his own experience as a war correspondent in besieged Sarajevo — the siege as the journalists saw it.
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1995
Theo Angelopoulos · Greece / France / Italy
Ulysses' Gaze (To Vlemma tou Odyssea)
Theo Angelopoulos' 1995 Grand Prix winner — a filmmaker's odyssey through the Balkans that ends in a single, unbroken shot through besieged Sarajevo.
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1994
John Zaritsky · United States / Canada
Romeo and Juliet in Sarajevo
John Zaritsky's 1994 documentary about Admira Ismić and Boško Brkić, the couple shot dead on the Vrbanja Bridge in 1993 while trying to flee the siege.
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1993
Bill Carter · United States
Miss Sarajevo
Bill Carter's 1993 documentary about the besieged city and its defiant Miss Sarajevo pageant — the film that inspired U2's 'Miss Sarajevo'.
1980s
2 films
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1985
Emir Kusturica · Yugoslavia
When Father Was Away on Business (Otac na službenom putu)
Emir Kusturica's 1985 Palme d'Or winner, set in 1950s Sarajevo — a child's-eye comedy about a father 'away on business' who is actually in a labour camp.
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1981
Emir Kusturica · Yugoslavia
Do You Remember Dolly Bell? (Sjecaš li se Dolly Bell)
Emir Kusturica's 1981 debut — a 1960s Sarajevo coming-of-age story that won the Lion of the Future at Venice.
1970s
3 films
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1975
Veljko Bulajić · Yugoslavia
The Day That Shook the World (Atentat u Sarajevu)
Veljko Bulajić's 1975 Yugoslav epic about the assassination of Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo — the largest-budget treatment of 28 June 1914.
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1974
Zdravko Velimirović · Yugoslavia
Death and the Dervish (Derviš i smrt)
Zdravko Velimirović's 1974 adaptation of Meša Selimović's Derviš i smrt — a dervish's crisis of conscience in an 18th-century Sarajevo whose logic is fear.
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1972
Hajrudin Krvavac · Yugoslavia
Walter Defends Sarajevo (Valter brani Sarajevo)
Hajrudin Krvavac's 1972 Yugoslav partisan classic about a WWII resistance leader in occupied Sarajevo — a cultural touchstone every Sarajevan over fifty knows by heart.
1950s
1 film