Director of the European Film Academy Matthijs Wouter Knol and Yorgos Lanthimos’ producer Athina Rachel Tsangari are among the industry professionals tapped to join British star Emily Watson on the Sarajevo Film Festival jury.
Alongside filmmaker Igor Bezinović and actress Sara Klimoska, they will judge the feature film competition at the Bosnian film festival, running for a week in mid-August.
Watson joins a rich constellation of auteurs who have previously presided over the Sarajevo jury in past editions, including Mike Leigh, Jeremy Irons, Asghar Farhadi, Ruben Östlund, and Mia Wasikowska.
The group will award the Heart of Sarajevo Awards in the feature film competition at the ceremony on Aug. 21.
Watson most recently starred as Mary Shakespeare in Chloé Zhao’s adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s award-winning historical novel Hamnet. Her notable film credits include Lars von Trier’s Breaking the Waves, A24’s God’s Creatures opposite Paul Mescal, Small Things Like These, Netflix drama Steve, and the Oscar-winning Gosford Park. On television, Watson currently leads the HBO/Max series Dune: Prophecy and has just finished shooting the second season.
Croatian director Bezinović is best known for his 2025 film Fiume o morte!, which won numerous awards, including the European Film Award for best documentary, as well as AFA Awards (Adriatic Film & TV Awards) for best film, best director, and best screenplay. His other works include the documentaries The Blockade (2012) and Veruda – A Film About Bojan (2015), both of which received the Oktavijan Award for best Croatian documentary film. His debut feature, A Brief Excursion (2017), premiered at Rotterdam and went on to win the Grand Golden Arena for best film at the Pula Film Festival.
Klimoska is an actress from North Macedonia whose latest leading role is in Sister Brother Manhole Cover, directed by Milcho Manchevski, which is set to premiere in 2026. This marks her third collaboration with the acclaimed director, following Willow and Kaymak. Her credits also include You Won’t Be Alone by Goran Stolevski, which premiered at Sundance, and Housekeeping for Beginners, which screened at the Venice Film Festival. Internationally, she has appeared in Nico by Eline Gehring, Family Secrets by Malik Vitthal, and Replay by Jason Lester. Klimoska has been part of the Talents Sarajevo program at Sarajevo Film Festival, and the corresponding scheme at the Berlinale. In 2022, she was nominated for the Heart of Sarajevo award for her role in the TV series Underneath.
Knol is an industry-renowned film producer, lecturer, editor and journalist from the Netherlands. Since 2021, he has been the CEO and director of the European Film Academy. He is responsible for the executive management, the vision and all related programming of current and future activities of the Academy, including brand and audience development, knowledge sharing and film heritage projects, and the annual European Film Awards. Knol has been part of the main jury at the festivals of Buenos Aires, Jerusalem, Istanbul, and Locarno.
Greek director-screenwriter-producer Tsangari is considered a principal instigator of the Greek New Wave. Her genre-bending films explore power and desire in gender, class and alterity. Her debut project,
The Slow Business of Going (2001), was a sci-fi road movie shot in hotel rooms across nine cities around the globe. It went on to garner several best film and best director awards worldwide, and now resides in MoMA’s permanent film collection.
Her sophomore feature Attenberg (2010) premiered at Venice in competition, where it won the Coppa Volpi and the Lina Mangiacapre Directing award. Chevalier (2015) won best film at the BFI London Film Festival and was nominated for best foreign film at the Independent Spirit Awards. Both movies were Greece’s official submissions for best international film at the Oscars. Under the banner of her Athens-based company Haos Film, she has produced a number of award-winning films such as Yorgos Lanthimos’ Kinetta and Alps, Georgis Grigorakis’ Digger, and was co-producer on Richard Linklater’s Before Midnight.
Her latest feature, Harvest, a neo-western starring Caleb Landry Jones and Harry Melling, was shot in the Scottish Highlands and premiered at Venice in 2024.
