The audiences of  Zagreb Film Festival (Croatia), Sarajevo Film Festival (BiH), Auteur Film Festival (Serbia) and Montenegro Film Festival (Montenegro) will present a new award within the Network of Festivals in the Adriatic Region – a special regional festival event, started at the initiative of Sarajevo Film Festival.

The audiences of these four festivals from four countries will together select the best film from the special programme that will take place at each of the festivals: Network of Festivals in the Adriatic Region programme. The programme will present some of the most interesting works of the European cinema from this year. These types of films, from smaller European territories, usually do not enter regular cinema distribution, and at the time of global pandemic they find it even harder to reach their audience.

The Adriatic Audience Award will be presented to the best film in the cash amount of EUR 5,000 for the film cinema distribution in the territory of former Yugoslavia.

The crisis resulting from the COVID-19 outbreak requires new thinking and new creative solutions in the film industry. These important festivals from four countries of the same language-speaking region have different sizes and profiles, but they all share a single mission – they are a platform for the promotion and presentation of the European audio and visual contents and talents. The partnership between the festivals aims to keep the audiences and attract new ones, and to improve organisation and holding of the festival with the help of latest technologies.

The first joint regional film festival – Network of Festivals in the Adriatic Region programme was held in April. In a shared programme, the programmers from the four festivals selected the films shown and awarded at the most recent film festivals in Cannes, Berlin, and Venice, and two remastered Yugoslav classics, all in an effort not to let the coronavirus pandemic prevent the film travelling from the author to the audience.

This cooperation will also be continued at the regular editions of all four festivals: the programmes of each festival will include a special programme titled the Network of Festivals in the Adriatic Region, with a selection of the best of European cinema. After counting audience votes from all four festivals, the best film selected by the audience will be presented the Adriatic Audience Award at the Auteur Film Festival in Belgrade.

The 19th Zagreb Film Festival will take place 14-21 November 2021.