Emily Watson has been a friend of the Sarajevo Film Festival since its creation. She was in the Bosnian capital at its second edition in 1996, just one year after the end of the siege, presenting Lars von Trier's "Breaking the Waves". The film, in which Watson starred alongside Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgård as a married couple in 1970s Scotland, earned the British actress her first Oscar nomination.
Ten years later, in 2006, Watson returned to the festival with her six-month-old daughter. Now 20 years old, that same daughter accompanied Watson in Sarajevo this year, supporting her mother while she served as president of the feature film jury and winner of the Heart of Sarajevo Award, an experience she described as "surreal".
At the ceremony presenting her honorary award, Watson dedicated the recognition to actress Katrin Cartlidge, her co-star in "Breaking the Waves", who died in 2002. The Sarajevo Film Festival created a film scholarship in Cartlidge's name following her death. Watson, twice nominated for an Oscar and known for her roles in "Hilary and Jackie" (1998), "Punch-Drunk Love" (2002) and "Hamnet" (2025), considers it appropriate to bring her adult daughter to the festival.
Watson explained that the festival is an important place because it represents regional "ethics" and "resistance" and "survival", values opposed to "a whole load of cynical sales agents" from other festivals. Festival director Jovan Marjanović noted that "Breaking the Waves was the film that won the Sarajevo Film Festival's second edition before we had a regional focus. It stole our hearts with that film. And then she kept coming back", he said regarding the recognition for Watson.
Watson indicated that the motivation to return is that "the feeling is that the festival is a very central part in the rebirth and healing of this region". She noted it is only the second time she has presided over a film festival jury, after doing so "decades" ago at the Dinard British and Irish Film Festival in France. This edition's jury includes Matthijs Wouter Knol, Athina Rachel Tsangari, Igor Bezinović and actress Sara Klimoska, and evaluates films such as Sandra Wollner's "Everytime", Florin Șerban's "You Don't Belong Here", which won at Locarno, and Dina Duma's "Skateboarding Is Not for Girls".
Watson observed that the festival's focus on Balkans regional cinema creates a sense of community where "people from this region will see films and talk about them". She added that these films "are not aimed at world domination in the way you have to be a success at one of those major festivals". She noted changes since her last visit in 2006, when "the walls were full of bullet holes and shrapnel marks". Watson underlined that many of the volunteers who were organizing then "had been children during the siege" and that "clearly the impact on their health and their lives had been monumental".
