European Film Academy CEO and Director Matthijs Wouter Knol, Greek filmmaker Athina Rachel Tsangari, director Igor Bezinović and actress Sara Klimoska will all join Emily Watson to head up the Jury of the Competition Program at the upcoming Sarajevo Film Festival. 

Watson, who is coming off the back of playing Mary Shakespeare in Chloé Zhao’s adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s historical novel Hamnet, will preside the jury this year. She joins a group of film auteurs who have previously presided over the festival in past editions, including Sergei Loznitsa (2025), Paul Schrader (2024), Mia Wasikowska (2023), Ruben Östlund (2019), Asghar Farhadi (2018), Michel Franco (2017), Mike Leigh (2004) and many more. 

Watson’s notable film credits include Lars von Trier’s Breaking the Waves and Hilary and Jackie, both of which earned her Oscar nominations for Best Actress, A24’s God’s Creatures opposite Paul Mescal, Small Things Like These, Gosford Park, Punch-Drunk Love, The Theory of Everything and more. She has just wrapped the second season of HBO/Max series Dune: Prophecy. 

Last year she was awarded the Richard Harris Award at the 2025 BIFAs, which recognized her outstanding contribution to British Film. Other accolades include the Joseph Plateau Honorary Award at Gent Film Festival, the Lifetime Achievement Award at the San Sebastian International Film Festival and Best Actress BAFTA award for her role in Appropriate Adult. Watson received Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for her work in the HBO/Sky mini-series Chernobyl in 2019. 

Wouter Knol has been CEO and Director of the European Film Academy since 2021 and is responsible for the executive management and vision of 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. 

He has worked as a creative and associate producer on 30 award-winning docs, working with directors such as Heddy Honigmann, Maria Augusta Ramos and Mani Kaul. For ARTE, he co-produced a digitial edition of 40 re-mastered works of Dutch documentarian Johan van der Keuken, which was awarded the Prix Cahiers due Cinéma in 2006. 

After a short stint at IDFA, he had 12 years at the Berlinale team, first as Head of Programming of Berlinale Talents and then as Director of the European Film Market. After launching several new training and industry platforms over the course of his career, Wouter Knol is an advocate for more diversity, equity and inclusion, introducing schemes to support this at Berlinale Talents, EFM and the European Film Academy. 

Director-screenwriter-producer Tsangari is considered a principal instigator of the Greek New Wave. Her genre-bending films explore power and desire in gender and class. Her 2001 feature The Slow Business of Going, a sci-fi road movie shot in hotel rooms across nine cities around the world, went on to win several Best Film and Best Director awards worldwide and new resides in MoMA’s permanent film collection. 

Her sophomore feature Attenberg premiered in Venice’s competition strand, where it won the Coppa Volpi and the Lina Mangiacapre Directing award. Her 2015 film Chevalier won Best Film at the BFI London Film Festival and was nominated for Best Foreign Film at the Independent Spirit Awards. Both films were Greece’s official submissions for Best International Film at the Academy Awards. 

She has produced a number of award-winning films through her Athens-based banner Haos Film, including Yorgos Lanthimos’ Kinetta and Alps, Georgis Grigorakis’ Digger and she was also a co-producer on Richard Linklater’s Before Midnight. Her latest feature Harvest, a neo-western starring Caleb Landry Jones and Harry Melling, premiered in Venice In Competition in 2024. 

Croatian filmmaker Bezinović’s film Fiume o morte! won numerous awards, including the European Film Award for Best Documentary as well as Best Film, Best Director and Best Screenplay at the Adriatic Film & TV Awards. 

His other works include documentaries The Blockade and Veruda – A Film About Bojan, both of which received the Oktavijan Award for Best Croatian Documetnary Film. His debut feature A Brief Excursion, premiered at Rotterdam and went on to win the Grand Golden Arena for Best Film at the Pula Film Festival. 

North Macedonian actress Klimoska is coming off the back of starring in Milcho Manchevski’s Sister Brother Manhole Cover. It marks her third collaboration with the director after Willow and Kaymak. Her further film credits include: You Won’t Be Alone, by Goran Stolevksi, which premiered at Sundance; Housekeeping for Beginners, which screened at Venice; Things Unsaid by Eleonora Veninova; and The Erl-King by Goran Radovanović among others. 

She’s been part of the Talents Sarajevo program at the Sarajevo Film Festival and Berlinale Talents. In 2022, she was nominated for a Heart of Sarajevo award for her role in TV series Underneath. The year before, she was recognized as a European Shooting Star for her performance in Lena and Vladimir. Klimoska is now venturing into directing and writing and is currently developing her second short film Chained. 

The 32^nd Sarajevo Film Festival will take place August 14-21, 2026. 

Oscar-winning actress Zoe Saldaña has boarded the narrative short It’s Complicated as an executive producer ahead of its world premiere at the HollyShorts Film Festival in August.

Written, produced by and starring Iman Karram, It’s Complicated follows Yara, a Palestinian-American screenwriter in Los Angeles, whose online Arabic lessons with Hana (Dina Shuhaiber), a poet and teacher living in Gaza, blossom into a profound friendship built on shared ambition, humor, and sisterhood. “When war suddenly tears them apart, Yara must confront grief, diasporic guilt, and the responsibility of using her voice to ensure Hana’s story is not forgotten,” reads a plot synopsis.

The film is directed by Darine Hotait and produced by Karram, Alana Duqum, Zoe Marie Jimenez, and Matt Van Tine, with Kais Karram and Zane Karram of Malibu Mutt Studios among the producing team. Eli Zavala of Splinter Pictures also serves as an executive producer.

“Iman has made a deeply personal film about identity, grief, sisterhood, and the responsibility artists feel to carry the stories of their communities forward,” said Saldaña, who won an Oscar in 2025 for her performance in Emilia Perez. “I was moved by the tenderness of the relationship at the center of the film and by Iman’s commitment to telling a story rooted in Palestinian womanhood with honesty, humor, and heart. I’m proud to support her voice and the team behind It’s Complicated as the film begins its festival journey.”

Karam said the project is “deeply personal.” She continued: “It was inspired by a real relationship with my Arabic tutor that profoundly reshaped my understanding of identity and how I want to use my voice as an artist… Growing up in the diaspora, it can sometimes feel like you are disconnected from your roots, or even like an imposter within your own community.”

“What began as online Arabic lessons with Hana grew into a friendship and a Palestinian sisterhood that made me feel truly seen from the other side of the world. She welcomed me into a culture I didn’t grow up experiencing firsthand, but one that has always been an integral part of who I am. She made me feel enough, exactly as I am, and gave me the courage to embrace my voice, stand in my values, and tell the stories that are important to me,” she added.

Hotait’s film marks the latest collaboration between emerging Palestinian filmmakers and internationally acclaimed talent, with Saldaña lending her support as the project prepares to make its debut on the festival circuit.

It’s Complicated will have its world premiere at the 22nd HollyShorts Film Festival, taking place Aug. 13–23, 2026, in Los Angeles. The Oscar-qualifying festival will showcase more than 400 short films from around the world.