It did not feel like a premiere. It felt like a first chapter, the kind that trusts the story it is about to tell.
Last October, the Adriatic Film Awards arrived on the regional stage, hosted at Porto Montenegro and supported by its team as a key partner. There was a sense that something new was taking shape — ambitious, regional and entirely its own. Ready to grow into something that would last.
A Name Worth a Red Carpet
For those just discovering the Adriatic Film Awards, this was the moment the region’s storytelling claimed its place on the stage, as the very first edition of a new initiative designed to shine a spotlight on the most powerful films and TV series emerging from Southeast Europe — from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia to Montenegro, Slovenia, Serbia and North Macedonia.
Birthed from a collaboration between three of the region’s most respected film festivals — the Sarajevo Film Festival, Zagreb Film Festival and Festival of Auteur Film Belgrade — the Awards are powered by the newly formed Adriatic Film & TV Academy, a jury of over 560 film and television professionals tasked with selecting the standout works of the season. Across ten categories, the ceremony in Porto Montenegro recognized achievements in both cinema and television — from Best Film and Best Director to Best TV Series and acting awards. Films like Fiume o morte! (a hybrid docudrama that took the top prize and also scored Best Director and Best Screenplay) and Little Trouble Girls were among the winners, alongside Operation Sabre, which swept multiple TV honours.
But beyond the accolades, the Adriatic Film Awards became a platform where narratives that resonate locally can travel internationally, helping raise profiles, spark conversations and build bridges between audiences and creators in new, meaningful ways.
The Little Things That Changed Everything
Great moments only exist because someone cared enough to make them happen. Together with the Sarajevo Film Festival team and the dedicated teams at Porto Montenegro, we helped guide the flow of the weekend, shaping each detail so that the night could breathe, so that the stories could take center stage and so that the region could see its own talent celebrated in a way it had long deserved. A legacy taking shape, a platform for stories born from this region, carried by its people, now stepping boldly into the wider world — and all of it, in Montenegro.
The impact was clear: 700 press reports, coverage from 30 international media outlets and 80 guests in attendance, a reminder that when people put care into their work, the results can ripple far beyond the room.
One Scene Ends, Another One Begins
There are moments when a story moves so fully into the world around you that time itself seems to bend and everything else falls away.
Cinema has that effect. It collapses time. It can make you feel ten years old again in a single glance, or stretch a single heartbeat into a memory you will carry for years.
Standing there in Porto Montenegro, watching actors we grew up admiring move through the same air as the stories we helped bring to life, it hit us. That is the strange and beautiful balance of being a partner on a project like this: you get to feel the awe and hold the frame. To be swept away by the moment, while making sure it lands just right.
The night ended. The magic stayed. This October 2026, the Adriatic Film Awards returns, and behind the scenes, the next chapter is already being crafted — a continuation of a story that celebrates the talent, the passion and the vision that made the first edition unforgettable.