Emily Watson has been a friend of the Sarajevo Film Festival since its inception.

She was here in the Bosnian capital at just the 2nd installment in 1996, only a year after the siege had ended, with Lars von Trier’s Breaking the Waves. Led by Watson and Swedish superstar Stellan Skarsgard, playing a married couple in 1970s Scotland, the film would go on to earn the British star her first Oscar nomination.

Ten years later, in 2006, Watson returned to the festival with her six-month-old daughter. Now 20, that same child has joined Watson in Sarajevo this year, supporting her mother — president of the feature film competition jury and Honorary Heart recipient — through what she describes as “a surreal” experience.

“Also,” Watson continues to The Hollywood Reporter about the retrospective screening at her honorary award ceremony, “Breaking the Waves was surreal. Having my kids there to watch it, and seeing [co-star] Katrin [Cartlidge, who died in 2002] for the first time in 20 years up on the screen…” she takes a breath. Upon Cartlidge’s death, Sarajevo set up a filmmaking bursary in her name, and Watson dedicated her Honorary Heart to the late actress while picking up the award this week. “Then Stellan sent an amazing message, so I was all shook up,” she smiles. “Let’s put it that way.”

The two-time Oscar nominee, best known for her roles in Hilary and Jackie (1998), Punch-Drunk Love (2002) and more recently, Hamnet (2025), says it feels right to bring her now-grown-up daughter here. “This festival is a really great place to bring young people because [of] its ethic. The culture here, it’s [about] resistance. It’s [about] survival. It’s really important for peace and prosperity, rather than a whole load of cynical sales agents,” she jokes about rival film festivals. “There’s a very, very pure feeling here.”

Sarajevo is just as in love with Watson as she is with it. “Breaking the Waves was the film that won the second Sarajevo Film Festival before we had the regional focus. She won our hearts back then with that film. And then she kept coming back,” festival director Jovan Marjanović told THR about recognizing the star. “It’s pretty emotional.”

What is it that’s pulled her back each time? “It’s a beautiful place to come,” Watson begins, “but it’s the sense that the festival is a very central part of the revival and the healing of this region. Just watching the films that have been selected from the region, they are really trying to examine [and] look deeply into who they are and what they are. It’s really been interesting actually, and also having jury members from the region — everybody has a very different perspective on things, the historical context.”

It is only the second time she’s headed up a film festival jury — she last did so “decades” ago at France’s Dinard British & Irish Film Festival — but it’s a muscle Watson is glad to stretch. “It’s been really lovely, actually. They’re an amazing bunch of people,” she adds about her fellow jury members Matthijs Wouter Knol, Athina Rachel Tsangari, Igor Bezinović and actress Sara Klimoska. They have a slew of beautifully crafted films to deliberate on, including Sandra Wollner‘s Everytime, Florin Serban’s Locarno award winner You Don’t Belong Here, and Dina Duma’s Skateboarding Is Not for Girls.

That focus on spotlighting regional cinema in the Balkans is also a big motivation for Watson. “People in this region will go see films and talk about them. They’ll get talked about in the press. There’ll be real points of interest, and rightly so,” she says about the sense of community here, a group united by cinema. “But they’re not films that are aiming for world domination in the way that you’ve got to be a hit in one of those big festivals and then have a massive, world-conquering campaign to register a breath, as it were.” (Reminder: Watson is likely still processing last year’s chaotic — and successful — Hamnet awards run.) “It’s just a very different reach. It’s for the people who live here.”

Sarajevo Film Festival, she adds, has become something of a tourist attraction too. It’s done wonders for the local economy, and entirely serves the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as the surrounding regions. “It’s a big deal,” she says. Has this year’s jury president and Honorary Heart recipient noticed the evolution of a festival born out of war? “When we were here, they were not long out of the war,” she answers.

“The walls were full of bullet holes and shell markings. It was very recent. And a lot of the volunteers, the women who were organizing us and driving cars [in 2006], they had all been children during the siege,” she continues. “They were incredibly young women, but clearly the impact on their health and their lives had been monumental.” Watson is keen to keep championing that legacy of defiance in Sarajevo.

The 2026 Sarajevo Film Festival runs Aug. 14-21. Check out THR‘s conversation with fellow Honorary Heart recipient Asghar Farhadi, or the best lines from Woody Harrelson’s Sarajevo masterclass.

EXCLUSIVE: Sasha Bühler, one of Netflix’s top international film execs and whose credits include All Quiet on the Western Front, has left the streamer.

Bühler, who is Director of Film for German-speaking Europe, has been with the Netflix since 2019. She originally joined as Director of Film for Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, the Nordics and CEE, having been brought in by David Kosse, who was the VP of International Original Film at the time.

Based out of London, she was originally tasked with establishing regional teams and setting the creative strategy for the international original film division. In 2021, she relocated to Berlin to drive the overall strategy in German-speaking Europe, which is a core international market for Netflix, as it pursued ‘local for local’ hits.

During her time at Netflix, Bühler worked on movies including All Quiet on the Western Front, which scored nine Academy Award noms and registered four wins including Best International Feature Film and Best Cinematography. A huge international success, the movie also garnered fourteen BAFTA noms and landed seven wins.

Recently, Bühler has overseen titles including Exterritorial and Brick, both of which are in Netflix’s all-time top-ten rankings for non-English-language films.

She joined Netflix from German distribution and production giant Constantin Film, where she was Head of Acquisitions and International Co-Productions.

During her eleven-year tenure there, she picked up movies including Dirty Grandpa, Florence Foster Jenkins, You Were Never Really Here and All Eyez on Me. Prior to Constantin, she was Head of Acquisitions for SquareOne Entertainment.

Netflix confirmed Bühler’s exit. Katja Hofem lead all of our programming for Germany, spanning series, film, unscripted and cquisitions). No word yet on Bühler’s next move.

The world premiere of the Fatih Akin film Geister (Ghost Song) will open the competitive Official Selection of the San Sebastián Festival’s 74th edition. The film directed by Akin will screen on 18 September at the Kursaal following the opening ceremony.

Akin will compete for the Golden Shell for the first time with a full-length film featuring Mariam Dawoud and Eren M. Güvercin on the cast. The young actors play Farasha and Faris, who meet at a graduation party and fall in love at first sight. When Farasha suddenly dies that same night, an extraordinary love story unfolds between two worlds, as she finds a way to meet Faris in his dreams.

Akin is one of the best-known German filmmakers on the international scene. He achieved world renown with Head-On

 (2004), recipient of the Golden Bear at the Berlinale. He later won the Best Screenplay Award at the Cannes Festival for The Edge of Heaven (2007) and the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Festival for Soul Kitchen (2009).

In addition to developing a solid career as a director, screenwriter, producer and actor, Akin has put his name to titles including The Cut (2014), premiered in competition at Venice; Aus dem Nichts / In the Fade (2017), which recognised Diane Kruger as Best Actress in Cannes and won the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film; The Golden Glove (2019), premiered in Berlin; Rheingold (2022), watched by more than a million spectators in Germany, and Amrum (2025), which was also presented at the French festival.

The German director therefore completes the list of the 17 feature films to compete for the Golden Shell and other official awards at the San Sebastián Festival’s 74th edition. The competitive Official Selection includes the new works from Fatih Akin, Roberto Bueso, Fred Cavayé, Jesse Eisenberg, Nicole Garcia, Mikel Gurrea, Amanda Kernell, Pablo Larraín, Mike Leigh, Gabriel Martins, Hans Petter Moland, Benjamín Naishtat, Javier Ruiz Caldera and Yeşim Ustaoğlu, as well as the debut films from Ah Biao, Maha Harada and Tony Vahl.