News

The Sarajevo Film Festival has unveiled the films that will play in its Open Air Program, which include Joachim Trier’s Cannes Grand Prix winner “Sentimental Value,” Michel Franco’s Berlin competitor “Dreams,” Nadia Fall’s Sundance competition title “Brides,” Dominik Moll’s Cannes competitor “Case 137,” and Miguel Ángel Jiménez’s Locarno title “The Birthday Party.”

Some of the screenings will be attended by stars or directors of the films, who will be in Sarajevo to receive the Honorary Heart of Sarajevo, including Willem Dafoe with “The Birthday Party,” Stellan Skarsgård with “Sentimental Value,” Franco with “Dreams,” and Paolo Sorrentino with “The Great Beauty.”

The program is divided into two sections: Open Air is for festival favorites and cinematic classics, and Open Air Premiere will showcase films from the former Yugoslav region.

Open Air Program

The Pavilion – Opening Film

Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, North Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro, 2025, 100 min.

Director: Dino Mustafić

Cast: Rade Šerbedžija,...

The 31st edition of the Sarajevo Film Festival has unveiled the lineup for its Open Air Program, consisting of two sections, Open Air and Open Air Premiere.

The program set for the Coca-Cola Open Air Cinema will be “showcasing some of the most important arthouse films of the year, as well as cinematic classics,” organizers said. “Some of the films in this program will be presented by acclaimed directors, actors, and screenwriters, [2025] recipients of the Honorary Heart of Sarajevo, including Paolo Sorrentino, Willem Dafoe, Ray Winstone, Stellan Skarsgård, and Michel Franco,” who received the honor several years ago.

Meanwhile, the new Open Air Premiere lineup will “showcase films from the former Yugoslav region in the unique setting of the Uniqa Open Air Cinema Stari Grad,” fest organizers highlighted.

Check out the full Sarajevo open air lineups below.

Open Air Program

The Pavilion (Paviljon) – opening film

Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, North Macedonia,...

December 2018 finds Paris roiled by Yellow Vests protesters, their defiance echoing through grand boulevards and narrow alleys. Against that tumult, flashes from rubber bullets carve stark silhouettes on bodies and pavements, each strike a brutal punctuation in the city’s unrest.

Case 137 stakes its claim in this charged atmosphere, following Inspector Stéphanie Bertrand of France’s Igpn—an internal affairs unit charged with policing the police. Once a street-patrol officer accustomed to the rhythms of Parisian precincts, she now probes the moment when state power cracked open a young protester’s skull.

Stéphanie’s hometown roots in Saint-Dizier surface as the inquiry unfolds, threading small-town resentments into a metropolitan drama. She sifts through silent security cameras and grainy phone footage with the vigilance of a forensic sculptor, each frame revealing partial truths and missing angles.

Loyalty to her force ripples beneath her professional composure, even as her sense of duty...

In director Dominik Moll’s superb 2022 police thriller, The Night of the 12th, the focus was on French detectives pursuing a vicious killer who was forever out of reach. The closer they came to nabbing him, the more he got away, leaving them to turn in circles year after year during a long, existential quest that left none of them unscathed.

In that movie, the cops were flawed human beings and clearly chauvinistic (there was only one woman on the squad), but they were still the good guys. In Dossier 137, a piercing slow-burn examination of police brutality, the tables have turned and the cops have become the criminals, making us question the very notion of policing in a France racked by social unrest and class division. Made with the same laser-cut precision as his previous work, but with a greater emphasis on procedure than before, Moll’s new thriller...

During the second day of the Cannes Film Festival, a fallen filmmaker icon was remembered and Tom Cruise showed the crowd the awe-inspiring power of movies.

Choose to Accept It

Tom Cruise stormed Cannes with a glitzy screening of “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning.” Big Hollywood screenings are par for the course with Cannes, but they can be a dangerous proposition. A couple of years ago, when “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” showed up to the festival, it was met with critical derision and wore those toxic reviews for six weeks before the movie opened. Thankfully, the response out of Cannes – complete with a five to seven-and-a-half minute standing ovation (depending on who you believe) was over-the-moon.

The film, which could be the final installment in the blockbuster franchise that began way back in 1996, was met with a warm response. (The review embargo broke right after the...

On Tuesday, delegates from France’s national film center held a press-conference in Cannes to share the good news: Moviegoing was on the rise, with admissions, local productions and theater openings all on the upswing throughout 2024. Two days later, one could still, ever so faintly, hear those exhibitors’ sighs of relief once Dominik Moll’s “Case 137” made its world premiere – because this slight police drama is of the exact type that will benefit from the relaxed expectations of ticket-buyers who hit the cinema once or twice a week, rather than a few times per year.

Modest in scale and ambition, this factually inspired, “just the facts, ma’am” drama finds an internal affairs officer investigating a case of police brutality, with both the film and its lead cop hitting the ground with an uncommon degree of tenacity. And give the title credit for honesty, as “Dossier 137” barely deviates from the work at hand,...

French actor Théo Navarro-Mussy did not join his co-stars on the red carpet for the premiere of their film “Dossier 137” at the Cannes Film Festival on Thursday, TheWrap has learned.

He has been banned from participating due to an impending civil suit against him accusing him of rape, according to local reports.

“Last week, the Cannes Festival management received a warning about an actor who appears in ‘Dossier 137’ regarding a case dating back to 2023, long before our film was shot. The case in question was dismissed in 2025, but the plaintiffs intend to bring a civil suit in response to the verdict,” movie producers Haut et Court said in a statement to TheWrap.

“Even though the allegations largely predate the production of the film, we agreed with the Festival management that the person in question will not accompany the film to Cannes, out of respect for the plaintiffs and their right to be heard,...

Cannes Film Festival leadership has removed actor Théo Navarro-Mussy from the red-carpet lineup for Dominik Moll’s competition entry Dossier 137 amid allegations of rape and physical and psychological violence by three women. Delegate General Thierry Frémaux informed the film’s team of his decision after the actors’ association Ada alerted him to official complaints dating to 2018, 2019 and 2020.

Though French courts dismissed the criminal case in April 2025, the complainants have registered as civil parties and intend to appeal. Frémaux explained that, since the investigation remains active through the appeal, the festival will withhold public recognition of anyone under such inquiry, following the César Academy’s protocol for incidents of violence.

Dossier 137 producers Caroline Benjo and Carole Scotta, whose Haut et Court backed the political drama, affirmed their support for the ban. They noted that the alleged events occurred “well before the film was shot” yet agreed with festival management...

Cannes Film Festival has banned “Dossier 137” actor Theo Navarro-Mussy from walking the red carpet at the film’s premiere on Thursday night amid accusations of rape and sexual assault.

Navarro-Mussy has a supporting role in “Dossier 137,” one of this year’s Cannes competition titles. News of his banning from the red carpet broke ahead of the movie’s Thursday evening premiere at the festival’s Palais theater.

Contacted by Variety, Navarro-Mussy’s lawyer said in a statement that the “case was closed for an insufficiently serious offense in April 2025.” She said the “plaintiffs have announced that they will be filing a new complaint, although this has not yet been done.”

“Dossier 137” producers Caroline Benjo and Carole Scotta, whose Haut et Court backed the political drama, told Variety the allegations against Navarro-Mussy date back to a case that occurred “well before the film was shot.”

“Even though the...

The BBC has acquired French crime thriller Sambre – Anatomy of a Crime, which follows the true story of one of France’s most prolific sexual predators.

The six-part series looks at a string of sexual assaults in northern France in the late 1980s, along the same road by the Sambre river. As the police fail to get to grip with the extent of the attacks or make a connection between cases, it is only 30 years later when a culprit is caught.

Jean-Xavier de Lestrade, the Oscar-winning filmmaker behind docuseries The Staircase and the drama Laetitia, recounts the legal case of a serial rapist. The cast includes Alix Poisson (The Returned, Six Women), Clémence Poesy (The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, Tenet), Olivier Gourmet (Oussekine, La Promesse), Noémie Lvovsky (Camille Rewinds, Farewell, My Queen), Jonathan Turnbull (Soldiers) and Pauline Parigot (Soldiers, Hpi).

The show follows the progression of the investigation and its...

The BBC has picked up Jean-Xavier de Lestrade’s TV thriller Sambre – Anatomy of a Crime.

Starring Alix Poisson and Clémence Poesy, the series is based on true events and follows the extraordinary legal case of a serial rapist who attacked women across three decades in the same location. The France Télévisions thriller came fresh off the back of the smash success of French movie Anatomy of a Fall.

Produced by Federation Studios, Sambre starts in Northern France in the late 1980s, where women are being sexually assaulted along the same road by the Sambre river, with attacks taking place early mornings and in a similar style. The justice system is overwhelmed by the accumulating cases. It will take 30 years to catch a man, who never stopped attacking women and is responsible for at least 54 cases of rape or sexual assault,...

Jean-Xavier de Lestrade, the Oscar-winning filmmaker behind docuseries “The Staircase,” has once again struck a chord with “Samber,” a limited series about a French serial rapist that explores the damages of sexual violence against women and children.

“Samber,” a six-part thriller series directed by de Lestrade, charts the true case of Dino Scala, a seemingly ordinary family man who sexually assaulted and raped more than 50 women and minors over three decades in Northeastern France. In spite of several victims filing complaints, Scala was able to slip through the cracks of France’s judicial system and benefited from a complacent stance toward sexual abuses. He was eventually arrested in February 2018 and found guilty of 17 rapes, 12 attempted rapes and 27 sexual assaults or attempts. In June 2022, Scala was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Represented in international markets by Federation Studios, the six-part series has captured the zeitgeist in France, which is undergoing a...