Association of Filmmakers of Bosnia and Herzegovina
This professional association, founded in 1950, already unites more than three generations of directors and other representatives of BIH film, including many winners of important international film festivals and winners of other national and international awards. The president of the association is Elma Tataragić, who is also the artistic director of our festival BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA LOOKS AROUND this year, together with Melina Alagić and Asja Krsmanović.
The association plays a significant role in the development and direction of the film industry in BIH. Since 2003, it has organised the annual festival of BIH film as part of the Sarajevo Film Festival. As a platform, it not only connects young talents from Sarajevo, Banja Luka, Bijeljina and Tuzla, but also provides a stage for foreign productions about Bosnia and Herzegovina and for films by Bosnian authors living and working abroad. Its annual BIH Cinema catalogues are considered the most important promotional materials for BIH film at festivals such as Cannes and Berlin.
An important part of the festival is the Student Competition programme, which gathers film students from all over the country in Sarajevo. In 2015, the association became a member of European Film Promotion and Film New Europe for Bosnia and Herzegovina. Since March 2016, film actors have also been part of the membership.
INTERKULTUR RUHR
METROPOLIS OF DIVERSITY - CULTURAL DIVERSITY
Interkultur Ruhr - an initiative of the Ruhr Regional Association and the NRW Ministry of Culture - was launched in 2016 to create a regional framework for artistic and cultural engagement with the new urban diversity and to sustainably strengthen the region's self-image as a "metropolis of diversity". Supporting existing initiatives is just as much a part of the programme as planning new projects and critically accompanying projects and institutions.
The BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA LOOKS AROUND International Film Festival has been a partner of the Interkultur Ruhr initiative since its premiere in 2018. Together, we are pleased not only to be able to keep our festival format alive in its second pandemic-friendly year, but also to be able to further expand both our reach and our networking activities from the local to the regional and interregional to the European and global framework thanks to many committed contributors.
The first key to new mutual openings, encounters and dialogues will continue to be the films in our festival programmes: whether through confrontation with realities of the present, through images and narratives beyond all routines of perception, or in marvelling at cinematic answers to new questions that arise in the first place from the evidence of hitherto undreamed-of answers.
