The 32nd Sarajevo Film Festival has come to a close, with Austrian filmmaker Sandra Wollner taking home the Honorary Heart for Best Narrative Feature Film for her movie ‘Everytime’. The film, which follows a mother, her young daughter, and a teenage boy as they travel to Tenerife to cope with the tragic death of their eldest daughter and sister, received widespread acclaim from the festival’s jury.

Wollner’s film was awarded the top prize, worth 16,000 Euros, which she shared with producers Lixi Frank, Viktoria Stolpe, and David Bohun. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Wollner discussed the significance of the festival, which was founded during the siege in 1995. ‘The festival being founded during the siege in 1995, I think that’s very powerful,’ she said. ‘And you can still feel something of that history here. I felt it yesterday when I had a radio interview. Just from some of the questions, you could get the sense that there might be a different way of approaching trauma or loss here, simply in the way people talked about the film.’

The jury, which included Igor Bezinović, Sara Klimoska, Matthijs Wouter Knol, and Athina Rachel Tsangari, led by Emily Watson, praised Wollner’s film for its ‘moments of cinematic grace’ and its ‘mesmerically elastic and transcendental grief-soaked ghost story’. The jury’s decision was unanimous, and they awarded the film the top prize at the festival.

Another notable winner at the festival was Georgian filmmaker Ana Urushadze, who took home the award for Best Director for her film ‘Supporting Role’. The film follows Niaz Ninua, a fading Georgian film star who is offered a chance to play a bizarre and deeply unsympathetic character in a young director’s debut feature. Urushadze’s film was praised by the jury for its ‘irreverent blending of the banal and the oneiric’, and she was awarded 10,000 Euros for her next project.

Other winners at the festival included Eva Kostić, who was awarded Best Actress for her performance in ’17’, and Adrian Văncică, who took home the award for Best Actor for his role in ‘You Don’t Belong Here’. The documentary film jury was headed up by Palestine’s Kamal Aljafari, and they awarded the Heart of Sarajevo to ‘To Hold a Mountain’, a film about two extraordinary women and a disappearing way of life.

The special jury award in the documentary selection went to ‘The Ferry Flows’, a film about a music teacher and his pupils who are forced to endure grief and loss as part of their daily lives. The film’s director, Zhora Papoian, was awarded 2,500 Euros for his work.

The festival also recognized several other films and filmmakers with special awards and prizes. The Katrin Cartlidge Foundation Award was given to Lana Daher, and the special youth perspectives award went to Dima Duma for her film ‘Skateboarding Is Not for Girls’. The festival’s closing night was marked by a screening of a restored version of Danis Tanović’s film ‘No Man’s Land’, which was a hit at the festival in 1995.