Sarajevo Honorary Heart — the roll of honour.

The award itself

A silver heart, made in Sarajevo.

The Honorary Heart is not minted, and it is not a flat plaque. It is a heart cast in silver, hand-made every year since 2004 by the Sofić goldsmith workshop in Sarajevo — the brothers Sead and Senad Sofić — working from the original sketch of the French designer Agnès B. She created the shape in the war years: at peace protests in Paris she cut hearts out of cardboard, sold them, and sent the money to the besieged city. The cardboard heart of 1993 became the silver trophy of 2004.

Each heart takes about ten days to make, assembled from two silver parts by four craftspeople. By the workshop's own count it had cast roughly two hundred of them by 2022. When a recipient holds it up at the National Theatre, they are holding the work of a Sarajevo workshop, not an order from abroad.

Material

Silver

Workshop

Sofić, Sarajevo

Design

Agnès B., 1993

First cast

2004

Sources: Klix.ba — 18 years of the Heart of Sarajevo (11 Aug 2022) · Radio Slobodna Evropa — from Sarajevo goldsmiths to world film stars (2025)