SARAJEVO, August 20 (Xinhua) -- The 26th Sarajevo Film Festival (SFF) awards were presented here Thursday at a no-audience ceremony livestreamed online due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The movie "Exile" directed by Visar Morina, a filmmaker from Kosovo, won the best feature film selected among eight films.
"Exile" tells the horror that 45-year-old pharmaceutical Kosovar engineer Xhafer from Kosovo experienced while attempting to get integrated into the German society.
The Heart of Sarajevo for the best director went to French Ru Hasanov for his movie "The Island Within."
The movie "Merry Christmas, Yiwu" by Serbian director Mladen Kovacevic, which won the best documentary award, depicts the living conditions and struggles of the new generation of workers in the Christmas ornaments factories in Yiwu, a famous small commodity production center in Southeast China.
Mexican movie director Michel Franco and Danish Actor Madds Mikkelsen won this year's honorary Hearths of Sarajevo.
Despite being held online, this year's SFF drew more than 1,500 guests and 130,000 viewers from 59 countries and regions who could choose among 187 movies.
In 1995, towards the end of the four-year siege of Sarajevo, Obala Art Centar initiated the SFF with an aim to help reconstruct civil society and retain the cosmopolitan spirit of the city. The SFF has been recognized as a leading film festival in the region by both professionals and audiences. Enditem
