Telemach Youth Film Festival Sarajevo today presented the first of a total of three jury teams for the upcoming edition of the Festival, which will be held from July 18 to 25, 2025.
The jury for the feature-length debut film selection – CineBloom Critique Award – was announced, and it will consist of Ines Mrenica, Martina D. Richter, and Martin Blaney.
Ines Mrenica Mutevelić is a Bosnian screenwriter, dramaturge, television editor, and film critic with a rich career in the media and film industry. Her professional journey became widely known through her work as the author, editor, and host of Veliki ekran, the only TV show in Bosnia and Herzegovina dedicated to film art, which aired on BHRT for six years. She later moved to Zagreb, where she continued working on various projects. For the past five years, she has been part of the Sarajevo Film Festival team, where she conducts interviews within the “Coffee with…” program. One of her notable projects is the series Motovunska šuma, inspired by Sarajevo under siege, which she is developing in Croatia. This project received financial support from the Croatian Audiovisual Center (HAVC). Her project Ubojstvo na fotografiji (Murder in a Photograph) also received support from HAVC. She has also written film critiques for the Bosnian portal Klix.ba for several years.
Martina D. Richter is a film critic and writer based in Vienna. She has been a regular contributor to the cultural section of the newspaper Politika since 2004, and to the website Asian Movie Pulse since 2018. Her film reviews, commentaries, and interviews have been published in Cineuropa, the Estonian Sirp, the European Film Academy Bulletin, DMovies, the weekly Vreme, Vice Serbia, Lupiga, Film.sk, XXZ Magazine, The European Animation Journal, and the daily Pobjeda. Martina is a member of Serbian FIPRESCI, AWFJ, and the European Film Academy. She is the founder and editor-in-chief of Ubiquariana, an online outlet specializing in short films and documentaries. From 2020 to 2023, she was a member of the selection committee of NIFFF, and in 2024, part of the pre-selection team for Kortfilmfestivalen (Grimstad). This year, she is participating in Doku:Fest.
Martin Blaney earned his doctorate on the relationship between German film and television at the University of Bath (UK), then moved to Germany in 1988. Since 1990, he has been the correspondent for German-speaking countries and Eastern Europe for the British magazine Screen International. He has also written for German Films Quarterly, Kino: German Film, Blickpunkt: Film, and Europa Cinemas Newsletter. He has served on juries at numerous international film festivals (Leipzig, Warsaw, Cluj, Pula, Kraków, Bitola, Plzeň, Bratislava) and moderated panels and pitching events across Europe, including at Berlinale, MIP TV, Connecting Cottbus, Sofia Meetings, Locarno, Trieste, and more.
The CineBloom selection is dedicated to young filmmakers presenting their first feature-length films. Unlike OFF Generation Features, which gathers established authors and films from renowned festivals, CineBloom serves as a platform for debutants and offers a space where new generations of filmmakers can find their first audience.
As part of this selection, the CineBloom Critique Award is presented — a film critics’ award recognizing the best debut work, valuing its contribution and innovation in film art. The award amounts to €3,000, representing an important incentive for young authors at the start of their careers.
