Emily Watson has been a friend of the Sarajevo Film Festival since its inception.
She was here in the Bosnian capital at its 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.
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