Aug 21, 2009, 8:10 GMT
Sarajevo - Films from Serbia and Greece swept the major awards Thursday night at the close of the Sarajevo Film Festival, which has grown from an act of defiance to a leading movie industry event in a decade and a half.
Serbian director Vladimir Perisic's Common People was recognized as the best film of the Sarajevo Film Festival on its final night Thursday. Relja Popovic, won the best actor award for his part in the film.
Greece's Aggelika Papoulia and Mary Tsoni split the best actress award for their roles in the film Dogtooth, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. Dogtooth also won the jury's special award.
Ten features from Croatia, Bulgaria, Serbia, Romania, Turkey, Greece, Hungary and Slovenia took part in the official competition for the Heart of Sarajevo awards.
The festival ended with the screening of the Wrestler, with Hollywood star Mickey Rourke, who was also the guest of honour in Sarajevo, along with the star of the X-Files series, Gillian Anderson.
Launched with just a few television sets and VHS tape players in 1994 in defiance of a siege, shelling and snipers, the Sarajevo festival has meanwhile become a leading industry event in the region.
A total of 232 films - 71 of them full-length features - from 53 countries were screened in six cinemas during the previous nine nights and were seen by 100,000 people, a record for the city with 400,000 inhabitants.
The festival has also become a major gateway for films from eastern, central and southern Europe to the big festivals in the West - Cannes, Berlin and Venice - as well as a virtual bourse bringing together actors, directors and producers.
This year thousands of guests from former Yugoslav republics, mostly Slovenia and Croatia, packed the festival screenings, events on the margins and Sarajevo clubs and restaurants.
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