Winners of the Sarajevo Cinem Festival 2025 Awards

The 31st Sarajevo Film Festival ended late on Friday, after the announcement of this year's winners. The Heart of Sarajevo for Best Feature, The Metro, went to The Wind Talking to Me, directed by Stefan đorđević, while Ivette Löcker's Our Time Will Come won the award for Best Documentary Feature.

A crushing fiction and documentary, The Wind Talks to Me stars its Serbian director and his family. “Stefan reunites with his family to celebrate his grandmother’s birthday for the first time since his mother’s recent death,” reads a synopsis. “This homecoming, driven by Stefan’s desire to complete a film about his mother and an attempt to make peace by rescuing a lost dog, will illuminate an introspective journey.”

In his acceptance speech, đorđević mentioned recent unrest and violent confrontations between former riot police and protesters in Serbia against the country's pro-independence president, Aleksandar Vučić, and the government. The peaceful demonstrations began in November after a train collapse killed 16 people, with critics blaming corruption and cost-cutting. In recent days, the situation has turned violent as supporters of the president and government organized counterprotests, and police were deployed.

"I dedicate this to my mother, but also to all the mothers who are up all night in Serbia, worrying about their children being brutally beaten and arrested on the streets," he said of his best film Sarajevo award.

Our Time Will Come, whose director discussed the film with Thr earlier this week, follows an interracial couple for a year. “Siaka, from Gambia, and his wife Victoria returned to their adopted ‘homeland’ of Austria to build a stable existence and start a family,” its synopsis reads. “Both invest much of their energy into achieving their shared utopia, but cultural differences remain significant, social structures remain immovable, and their own history and traditions are equally difficult to shake off.”

Ivana Mladenović was honored as Best Director for Sorella di Clausura . Additionally, Best Actress and Actor awards were given to the cast of Director Kukla Fantasma Y Sarah Al Saleh, Aline Juhart, Milovanović and Mia Skrbinac and Andrija Kuzmanović for their roles in Yugo Florida respectively.

The festival's four competition sections—for feature films, Metrol, documentary, short films, and student films—showcased 15 world films, six international films 28 regional debuts, and two national films. A total of 50 films competed for the Sarajevo Film Awards.

Sarajevo Film Festival Director Jovan Marjanović and his team also brought stars to the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Willem Dafoe, Stellan Skarsgård, and Ray Winstone received the Honorary Heart of Sarajevo Honor at the festival, as did Italian author Paolo Sorrentino . The works of Russian-born director and artist Ilya Khrzhanovsky and Sorrentino were also featured in curated retrospectives of their films.

Check out all the winners from the 31st Sarajevo Film Festival below.

Honorary Heart of Sarajevo
Willem Dafoe
Ray Winstone
Stellan Skarsgård
Paolo Sorrentino