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Sarajevo Film Festival — the actors and directors who came to the city

De Niro opened the festival and stayed for Taxi Driver. Jolie became an honorary citizen. The 2026 class brought Watson, Farhadi, Luna, Harrelson, and Hadžihafizbegović. A short history of who came.

By Nedim Hadzimahmutovic · Sarajevo

The Sarajevo Film Festival was founded in a besieged city in 1995. By the time it reached its 32nd edition in 2026, the guest list looked like this: Robert De Niro, Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Daniel Craig, Orlando Bloom, John Malkovich, Gérard Depardieu, Morgan Freeman, Stellan Skarsgård, Steve McQueen, Wim Wenders, Béla Tarr, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Paolo Sorrentino, Isabelle Huppert, and Alejandro González Iñárritu (per the Irish Times, 2019; and the Honorary Heart roll). Not bad for a festival that screened its first films while the city was still under mortar fire.

Robert De Niro — 2016

De Niro opened the 22nd edition in August 2016. He was 72. The festival gave him the Honorary Heart of Sarajevo — a lifetime-achievement award, the only one ever given. The open-air screening that accompanied the award was Taxi Driver. De Niro walked the red carpet at the National Theatre and stayed for the film (per RFE/RL, Al Arabiya, Gulf News, August 2016).

Angelina Jolie — 2011 and 2012

Jolie came twice. In 2011, she attended the 17th edition alongside Brad Pitt (per Today.com). Her directorial debut In the Land of Blood and Honey — a drama about the Bosnian war, shot on location with Yugoslav actors — had premiered that year. The film initially sparked concern among Bosnian victims’ groups, but once screened, most welcomed it as sincere (per RFE/RL).

In 2012 she returned for the 18th edition without Pitt, arriving with at least three of their children. The city made her an honorary citizen of Sarajevo — the honour had been announced earlier that spring — for her efforts in “keeping the truth about wartime events in Sarajevo and Bosnia-Herzegovina alive.” On receiving it, she said: “This means so much to me. My heart is in this city” (per BBC, July 2012).

Brad Pitt — 2011

Pitt attended the 17th edition in 2011 with Jolie. He walked the red carpet.

Stellan Skarsgård — 2017

Skarsgård received the Honorary Heart at the 23rd edition. He had co-starred with Emily Watson in Breaking the Waves (1996). When Watson spoke at the 32nd edition in 2026, she referenced him by first name from the stage: “This city, as Stellan said, knows more than any other the power and vital nature of that fight.”

The 2026 class — five Hearts

The 32nd edition awarded five Honorary Hearts:

  • Emily Watson — spoke through tears, dedicated the award to Catherine, said she brought her children because this festival has “its spiritual heart in the right place.”
  • Asghar Farhadi — told the red carpet: “Between the Oscar and the Heart of Sarajevo, tonight I would choose the Heart of Sarajevo.”
  • Diego Luna — presented Ashes, his Cannes-premiered directorial feature on Mexican migration.
  • Woody Harrelson — Welcome to Sarajevo screened alongside his award. The man who played the war journalist came back to collect the Heart.
  • Emir Hadžihafizbegović — the first Bosnian actor on the honorary roll.

Also at the 32nd edition

Céline Sciamma gave a masterclass and screened her 40-minute film Tutti Frutti. Athina Rachel Tsangari served on the feature-film jury alongside Watson. Paweł Pawlikowski attended the gala opening of his film Fatherland — his SFF arc spans 34 years.

Other names on the historical guest list

The Irish Times, in a 2019 retrospective, listed the festival’s guest book as including Daniel Craig, Orlando Bloom, John Malkovich, Gérard Depardieu, Morgan Freeman, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Juliette Binoche, and Jeremy Irons — alongside the Honorary Heart recipients documented on the full roll. A festival founded during a siege, in a city of 300,000, drawing this kind of list year after year, is doing something the larger festivals are not.

Why they come

The standard answer — the one Jolie and De Niro and Watson all gave, in different words, in different years — is that the festival’s origin gives it a moral weight that Venice, Berlin, and Toronto do not carry. The festival was an act of cultural resistance before it was a film market. The guests who come are not only here for the programme. They are here because a city under fire screened films anyway, and the memory of that decision is still in the room.

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