Bosnia And Hzegovina Showbiz Latest News and Updates

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor “The Hollow” won the Heart of Sarajevo Award for best TV drama series at the Sarajevo Film Festival on Sunday, and also came away with a host of other awards. The in-competition series came from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Kosovo and Slovenia.

The Heart of Sarajevo awards for TV series, the Sarajevo Film Festival’s awards strand for TV shows, unraveled this evening, and they were dominated by two shows, the Serbian comedy Mom and Dad Are Playing War 2 (Tata Se Igraju Rata 2) and the Bosnian drama The Hollow (Kotlina).

Croatia’s reputation as a go-to European destination is partly thanks to TV blockbusters such as Succession and Game Of Thrones showcasing its magnificent landscape and stunning coastline. It has also grown in popularity among the A-list jet set, with the Beckhams and Beyoncé among recent visitors.

Christopher Vourlias It’s a welcome sight for any longtime visitors returning to Sarajevo, the white-jacketed waiters circling the terrace of the majestic, Austro-Hungarian-built Hotel Europe as film and TV industry professionals parse scripts and close deals amid the espresso-fueled chatter. Around them a haze of cigarette smoke hovers like the mist that settles each morning over the green hills that ring this scenic Bosnian city.

Christopher Vourlias U2 frontman Bono made a surprise appearance Friday night at the opening ceremony of the Sarajevo Film Festival, with the Irish pop star leading a rapturous crowd in a cappella rendition of Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song.” The legendary vocalist, appearing alongside bandmate the Edge, took the stage after an emotional screening of “Kiss the Future,” director Nenad Cicin-Sain’s documentary, produced by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, about U2’s relationship with war-torn Sarajevo in the 1990s. Based on American-born aid worker Bill Carter’s “Fools Rush in: A Memoir,” the film chronicles the band’s efforts to publicize the plight of the city’s besieged civilians during the Bosnian War.

Bono made a surprise appearance at the Sarajevo Film Festival this evening, where he accompanied the crew behind the U2-inspired Bosnian war documentary Kiss The Future, which opened the festival. 

Tara Karajica At times Bosnia and Herzegovina has looked like it was stuck in a bit of a no-man’s land when it comes to film production, lacking the financial fire-power to press forward, but its TV series business is booming. The Southeast European country boasts two Oscar nominations – Danis Tanović’s “No Man’s Land,” which nabbed a statuette in 2002, and Jasmila Žbanić’s “Quo Vadis, Aida?,” which was nominated in 2021 – and its filmmakers have enjoyed success on the festival circuit, but it still hasn’t upped its meagre level of production, especially in terms of fiction features, with only one or two majority Bosnian films produced a year.

Christopher Vourlias Beta Film has acquired international distribution rights to “I Know Your Soul,” a new series from Oscar nominee Jasmila Žbanić (“Quo Vadis, Aida?”) that premieres Out of Competition next month at the Venice Film Festival. The six-episode limited series is led by European Film Award-winning actress Jasna Đuričić, who plays Nevena Murtezic, a prosecutor in the process of divorce and single mother to a teenage son.

In the three years since the Sarajevo Film Festival launched its Heart of Sarajevo TV awards, much has changed in the Balkan region’s television sector thanks to investment from regional telecom companies in the local production space. Companies such as Bosnia and Herzegovina’s BH Telecom, the main sponsor of this year’s Sarajevo Film Festival, and Telecom Serbia have been flexing their financial muscle in a space that undercapitalized public broadcasters and once confident-but-now-nervous global streamers are yet to enter.

The Sarajevo Film Festival has long been the biggest showcase of Southeast European cinema and this year’s edition, which unspools on August 11, is on course to be its most reflective and regionally focused edition yet. 

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Forty-nine films will compete for the Heart of Sarajevo awards at the 29th Sarajevo Film Festival, which runs in Bosnia and Herzegovina from Aug. 11 to 18. The Feature Film Competition will present 11 titles, with two world premieres, one international and five regional premieres. World premieres include “Europa” from Austrian-Iranian filmmaker Sudabeh Mortezai, whose credits include 2018 Venice Days entry “Joy,” the Best Film winner at London Film Festival, and “Macondo,” which competed for the Golden Bear at Berlin Film Festival in 2014. The other world premiere is “Medium,” from Greek director Christina Ioakeimidi, whose debut feature was “Harisma” in 2010.

Bruno Fernandes has not yet reported back for pre-season training at Manchester United due to his post-campaign international commitments.

Bruno Fernandes will cap off a mammoth season when his Portugal side face Iceland in their second Euro 2024 qualifier on Tuesday.

Here are your Monday morning Manchester United headlines.

Portugal manager Roberto Martinez insists Bruno Fernandes is still desperate to play football after a long and arduous season with Manchester United.

Bruno Fernandes has revealed he never takes up Erik ten Hag’s offer of a rest at Manchester United, explaining how he knows the day will come when he won’t be given the choice.

Of all the sub-plots in Saturday's Champions League final, the return of Edin Dzeko to the minds of Manchester City fans is one of the more intriguing.

Eight feature documentaries and eight short docs have been selected as finalists for the 16th Doc Alliance Awards, presented by the Doc Alliance – the association of European documentary festivals.

Christopher Vourlias Heretic has acquired world sales rights to “Sweet Dreams,” the sophomore feature from award-winning Bosnian Dutch director Ena Sendijarević (“Take Me Somewhere Nice”). Set on a remote Indonesian island during the waning days of the colonial era, the film centers on Dutch sugar plantation owner Jan and his wife, Agathe, who sit atop the local food chain — until the night when Jan, returning from a visit to his native concubine, Siti, suddenly drops dead in front of his wife. Desperate to hold onto her privileged lifestyle, Agathe forces her estranged son, Cornelis, and his pregnant wife, Josefien, to travel from Europe and take over the family business. Those plans are upended by a worker’s uprising, as Cornelis and his progressive ideals must confront the uncomfortable reality that his father’s will places Siti at the helm of the family estate, setting in motion a cat-and-mouse game that puts those ideals to the test.

Former Manchester City defender Micah Richards believes his old teammate Edin Dzeko had a hard time at the Etihad Stadium and deserves to be thought of more highly.

The Tribeca Festival has its opening-night, closing-night and centerpiece films.

Mary's Meals has been forced to shut down all its charity shops and warehouse after deeming the operation as 'no longer viable'.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Netflix, facing more competition globally in the streaming wars, has cut pricing in more than 100 markets worldwide — in some cases, chopping the price of monthly plans in half — to boost subscriber acquisition and retention. The streamer has reduced prices in countries and territories across Asia, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Netflix is not reducing prices in North America or Western Europe, its most mature markets. All told, the price reductions span more than 100 markets, according to research firm Ampere Analysis (see list, below). Those include Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Kenya, Iran, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Albania, North Macedonia, Slovakia, Yemen, Jordan, Libya, Slovenia and Bulgaria.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Watching “Kiss the Future,” a documentary about the band U2’s relationship with wartorn Sarajevo in the 1990s, it’s hard not to think: “We’ve seen this movie before.” That’s not to do with the doc itself so much as how aspects of the 30-year-old footage from Bosnia’s brutal civil war parallel what we’ve seen in the news coverage coming out of Ukraine for the past year. Both involve stranger-than-fiction (or stranger-than-fascism) scenarios of cosmopolitan cities suddenly subject to state terrorism, which makes the Matt Damon and Ben Affleck-produced film coincidentally timely, for all its belatedness. In a sense, “Kiss the Future” is the story of a long-distance romance, between a superstar rock quartet reaching its peak and a once-grand metropolis that’s bottoming out. In the early ’90s, genocidally minded Serbian president Slobodan Milošević tried to subject the happily mixed population of Sarajevo to ethnic cleansing by any means necessary. The area’s young people fought back in whatever spirit-lifting way they could — including founding underground discos, forming punk bands and otherwise keeping the arts alive as they dodged shelling and snipers. An American activist, Bill Carter, had the idea to enlist the stadium-filling U2 in publicizing their plight, which led to nightly satellite appearances by Sarajevo locals on the giant screens of the “Zoo TV” tour’s European leg.

Jordan Moreau SPOILER ALERT: This interview contains spoilers from Episode 6 of “The Last of Us,” now streaming on HBO Max. HBO’s “The Last of Us” series just took a major leap to the video game’s sequel, “The Last of Us: Part II,” that fans are sure to recognize: The snowy Jackson, Wyoming, settlement where “Part II” begins was faithfully recreated in Episode 6 — despite not appearing in the original game. It’s the first major connection to “Part II” that the show has made. Without spoiling the events of the sequel, the wintery Jackson town is a major location in the opening hours of the game. In the original “The Last of Us,” players learn about Jackson from Tommy (Gabriel Luna) and Maria (Rutina Wesley), but they mainly stay at the hydroelectric dam encampment and see Jackson only at a distance. The section of the game also takes place during the fall, not the winter.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Matt Damon revealed he was in the “early stages” on a project about Ukraine during the press conference for “Kiss the Future” at the Berlin Film Festival. Damon is a producer on the documentary which chronicles the struggle of Sarajevo citizens during the Bosnian War. World premiering in the Berlinale Special section, the politically minded documentary is directed by Nenad Cicin-Sain and based on “Fools Rush in: A Memoir” the memoir of Bill Carter, an aid worker. It shows how his determination resulted in the enlistment of the world’s largest rock band, U2, to help shine a light. Fifth Season and WME handling worldwide sales. Asked if he was considering following the footsteps of Sean Penn with “Superpower” with a film on the war in Ukraine, he said he’s “watched as everyone has with horror that unfolded there in the last year,” and although they “don’t have anything on it right now there isn’t any doubt that we’ll be doing.”

Brent Simon There’s no shortage of movies that gauzily peddle the notion of art as a balm. Few, however, are as invested in the charged immediacy of art’s relationship to real-life pain as “Kiss the Future,” a documentary enjoying its world premiere Feb. 19 in the Berlinale Special slot, with Fifth Season and WME handling worldwide sales. Directed by Nenad Cicin-Sain, and based on American-born aid worker Bill Carter’s “Fools Rush in: A Memoir” (the pair share a screen story credit), the film is a savvy mélange of history and cultural portraiture that affectingly chronicles the struggle of Sarajevo’s besieged civilians during the Bosnian War of the 1990s.

New research has discovered that during the ongoing cost of living crisis, people in the UK claiming their State Pension entitlement only just break even despite an increase to weekly payment rates in April. The research, conducted by pension advisors Almond Financial, looked at the current State Pension in comparison to the average cost of living in the UK.

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