Sarajevo film festival to honor Turkish director

By Talha Ozturk

BELGRADE, Serbia (AA) - Turkey’s Cannes-winning director Nuri Bilge Ceylan will receive the Honorary Heart of Sarajevo Award at the 24th Sarajevo Film Festival, the organizers of the event have said.

The international festival will be held between Aug. 10-17 in the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Ceylan will receive the Award in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the art of filmmaking and of his support of the Sarajevo Film Festival.

He is also the honorary guest of this year's "Tribute To" program of the festival.

Ceylan is one of today’s most acclaimed filmmakers.

His short film Cocoon was selected for the Official Competition at the Cannes Film Festival 1995 -- the first Turkish short film to receive this distinction.

His feature-length films Kasaba (1997) and Clouds of May (1999) won international acclaim and multiple awards. After winning the Grand Prix and the Best Actor honors at Cannes in 2003, his third feature-length film, Distant (2002) continued on the festival circuit, scooping a total of 47 awards, 23 of them international, and becoming the most-awarded Turkish film in the history of cinema.

In 2006, his Climates won the FIPRESCI award at Cannes; in 2008, Ceylan took the Best Director award at Cannes for Three Monkeys which subsequently became the first Turkish film shortlisted by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Ceylan returned to Cannes in 2009 as a member of the festival’s main competition jury.

In 2011, he won the Grand Prix at Cannes for Once Upon a Time in Anatolia – an international coproduction that included Bosnia and Herzegovina among its countries of production.

Ceylan’s next film, Winter Sleep, won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2014.

His latest film, The Wild Pear Tree, in cooperation with Bosnia-Herzegovina, was screened this year in the Official Competition at Cannes where it was warmly received by audience and critics.

Also Turkish director Osman Nail Dogan’s The Pigeon Thieves will compete with nine other entries in the Feature Film category, with Iranian director Asghar Farhadi serving as a jury member.

The Sarajevo Film Festival is a leading international film festival in the region with a special focus on southeastern Europe.