24th Sarajevo Film Festival Opens, Nuri Bilge Ceylan Receives Honorary Heart Award

SARAJEVO, (Patria) - The 24th edition of the Sarajevo Film Festival began this evening. The festival opened with a series of ceremonial events, and the central ceremony, as in previous years, was held at the National Theatre.

The honor of hosting this year's festival opening fell to one of the most significant actors of the younger generation, Alban Ukaj.

The Honorary Heart of Sarajevo awards were also presented to Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan, as well as to the owner and founder of ASA Prevent Group and founder of the Hastor Foundation, Nijaz Hastor.

The recipient of the Honorary Heart of Sarajevo award at the 24th Sarajevo Film Festival is Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan, one of the most respected filmmakers of our time. The award is presented to Ceylan in recognition of his exceptional contribution to the art of filmmaking and his support for the Sarajevo Film Festival. Nuri Bilge Ceylan is also the honorary guest of the Dedicated program at the 24th Sarajevo Film Festival.

Ceylan, a graduate electrical engineer whose first love was photography, is an exceptional artist and a driving force in the global production of art-house films. Film critics describe him as an author with an original cinematic style based on highly emotional films with a unique atmosphere that question traditional values and family relationships, explore the human soul, and deal with existential themes such as the questions of life and death.

He was born in Istanbul in 1959. His short film COCOON was screened in the competition program of the Cannes Film Festival in 1995, becoming the first Turkish short film to be included in the official selection of that prestigious festival. With his feature films KASABA (1997) and CLOUDS OF MAY (1999), he achieved international acclaim and won numerous awards. His third feature film, DISTANT (2002), became the most awarded film in the history of Turkish cinema, winning a total of 43 awards, including 23 international awards, among them the Grand Prix and the Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival.

In 2006, he won the FIPRESCI Award at Cannes for the film CLIMATES, and two years later, the Best Director award for the film THREE MONKEYS, which subsequently became the first Turkish film to be shortlisted for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Ceylan returned to Cannes in 2009 as a member of the main festival jury, and two years later with the film ONCE UPON A TIME IN ANATOLIA – produced internationally with the participation of Bosnia and Herzegovina – with which he won the Grand Prix. Ceylan's next film, WINTER SLEEP, was awarded the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2014.

His latest film, THE WILD PEAR TREE, in the co-production of which Bosnia and Herzegovina also participated, was screened in the Main Competition Program of this year's Cannes Film Festival, where it was met with an excellent reception from the audience and critics.

After the ceremony, the audience had the opportunity to watch the film COLD WAR by Oscar winner Pawel Pawlikowski, who was awarded Best Director for this work at the recently concluded 71st Cannes Film Festival.