Sarajevo Paweł Pawlikowski — 34 years, from Serbian Epics to Fatherland
The Polish-British director whose SFF arc spans the festival's entire life — from a documentary about the Serbian army during the siege to a Sandra Hüller film opening the 32nd edition.
No filmmaker’s arc at the Sarajevo Film Festival is as long as Paweł Pawlikowski’s. It spans 34 years and covers the festival’s entire life, from a documentary screened during the siege to a Cannes-winning feature that opened the 32nd edition. Five data points, in order.
1992 — Serbian Epics
Pawlikowski’s documentary Serbian Epics (1992) was made during the Bosnian war. It followed Radovan Karadžić and the Serbian nationalist mythological landscape that was, at that moment, besieging Sarajevo. The film screened in the festival’s early years (per Deadline and Variety, July 2026). This is the origin point: a filmmaker documenting the army that was shelling the city that would, three years later, found the festival that would honour him.
2010 — Ida at SFF
Ida (2013), his black-and-white film about a young Polish nun who discovers she is Jewish, screened at the Sarajevo Film Festival. It went on to win the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 2015, the first Polish film to do so.
2018 — Cold War opens the 24th edition
Cold War (2018), his second black-and-white Polish film, opened the 24th Sarajevo Film Festival. The film won Best Director at Cannes that year and earned Pawlikowski his second Oscar nomination (Best Director and Best Foreign Language Film). It is a love story set across Cold War Europe, and it brought Pawlikowski back to Sarajevo as the opening-night filmmaker.
2019 — Honorary Heart
At the 25th Sarajevo Film Festival (2019), Pawlikowski received the Honorary Heart of Sarajevo, in the same class as Alejandro González Iñárritu, Isabelle Huppert, and Tim Roth. In a Variety interview that week he said: “I don’t have a hook on contemporary. I don’t know how to do it, because I’m living it and watching it with horror” (Variety, 20 August 2019).
2026 — Fatherland opens the 32nd edition
On 14 August 2026, Pawlikowski’s Fatherland — starring Sandra Hüller and Hanns Zischler, about a Nobel Prize-winning writer (Thomas Mann) and his daughter on a road trip across 1949 Europe — opened the 32nd Sarajevo Film Festival. The film had won Best Director at Cannes earlier that year. Pawlikowski attended the gala screening at the National Theatre.
No other filmmaker on the Honorary Heart roll has both received the Heart and opened the festival in two different decades. No other filmmaker’s body of work maps the festival’s full timeline, from the siege years to the present.
The arc
Serbian Epics in 1992. Fatherland in 2026. Between them: an Oscar, two Cannes directing prizes, one Honorary Heart, two opening-night screenings, and the entire history of a festival that was founded during the siege in 1995. Pawlikowski was there before the festival existed, and he is still opening its editions thirty-four years later.
Sources & further reading
- Variety — Paweł Pawlikowski's Fatherland to Open 32nd Sarajevo Film Festival (July 2026)
- Deadline — Fatherland To Open Sarajevo Film Festival (July 2026)
- THR — Fatherland With Sandra Hüller to Open Sarajevo Film Festival (July 2026)
- Deadline — Fatherland Review: Pawel Pawlikowski's Latest Is A Masterclass In Artistic Discipline (Cannes, May 2026)
- Variety — Paweł Pawlikowski at SFF 2019: 'I don't have a hook on contemporary' (August 2019)
- Paweł Pawlikowski — Wikipedia
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