Sarajevo & Locarno Film ‘Sorella Di Clausura’, Produced By Golden Bear Winner, Gets North American Deal

EXCLUSIVE: Big World Pictures has acquired U.S. and Canadian rights from sales agent B-Rated International to Ivana Mladenović’s Sarajevo winner Sorella Di Clausura, which had its world premiere in Locarno’s competition.

The bittersweet comedy, which won Mladenović the Heart Of Sarajevo best director prize, is produced by Ada Solomon, producer of Berlin Golden Bear winner Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn. An early 2026 theatrical release is being lined up following fall and winter festival play.

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The synopsis reads: “Stela, educated but unable to hold down a job, fell in love with a famous Balkan musician after seeing him on TV. This passion transformed into obsession is taking over her life and now she must meet him. One of the musician’s supposed mistresses, Vera, a starlet-musician, promises to help Stela meet her idol and, even more, to take her away from her poverty-stricken rural life. Their two worlds collide when Vera brings Stela to Bucharest, where she runs a company that sells sexual products.”

Mladenović said of the film’s origins: “Sorella Di Clausura is based on real people, and it is a story about the game between reality and dreams. Although tragic at its core, inspired by the story of a singer and friend who lost her life prematurely, the film is primarily an empathetic parody of romantic melodramas. Set in the Balkan margins at the beginning of the 2008 economic crisis, the film explores how much magic and fiction a cutting-edge universe can take in. It plays on this ambiguity and suggests that there is no place for magic in this reality and that the only way to keep dreaming without being expelled from the universe is to go on dreaming, knowing that you’re dreaming. Otherwise, Sorella Di Clausura is a bittersweet comedy of manners about people’s beliefs around sex in a country at the outskirts of the European Union. The film looks at the relation between sex and capital – or more specifically, whether sex can be a substitute for money, whether it can stop hunger or inflation.”

Mladenović has previously directed the documentary feature Turn Off The Lights (Tribeca 2012; Sarajevo 2012, Best Documentary); and fiction features Soldiers: A Story From Ferentari (Toronto 2017) and Ivana The Terrible (Locarno 2019, Special Jury Award).

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