Charlie Kaufman To Receive Sarajevo’s Honorary Heart Career Achievement Award

Writer-director Charlie Kaufman is set to be honored with the Sarajevo Film Festival’s career achievement Honorary Heart of Sarajevo Award during the festival’s upcoming 29th edition.

As part of the award presentation, Sarajevo will host an open-air screening of the Kaufman-penned Adaptation, directed by Spike Jonze and starring Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep, Chris Cooper, Tilda Swinton, and Jay Tavare.

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From Sarajevo’s statement announcing the award, it appears Kaufman will attend in person to receive the award, but it remains unclear whether the filmmaker will participate in press interviews and to what extent he will discuss his work with the WGA strike ongoing.

WGA and SAG regulations around appearances at festivals are complicated. The rules forbid members from promoting any work completed for a struck company. Kaufman, who previously traveled to Sarajevo in 2008 with his directorial debut Synecdoche, New York, picked up the Laurel Award for Screenwriting Achievement at this year’s WGA Awards, where he gave a scorching speech as the guild prepared to square off with the AMPTP in another round of failed contract talks.

“They tricked us into thinking we can’t do it without them,” he said of the Studios. “But the truth is they cannot do anything of value without us.”

Kaufman’s writing career began in the early 1990s with the cult sitcom Get A Life, and he spent much of the ‘90s working in comedy and sketch television before transitioning into film. He was nominated for a Writers Guild Award, an Academy Award, and a Golden Globe Award in 1999 for his Being John Malkovich screenplay.

His second collaboration with Michel Gondry, 2004’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, won a Writers Guild Award and the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. In 2008, Kaufman won a second Independent Spirit Award in directing for his post-modern psychological drama Synecdoche, New York. His most recent feature was the 2020 surrealist thriller I’m Thinking of Ending Things, based on the novel by Iain Reid.

“We are thrilled that, after 15 years, we are welcoming back to the Sarajevo Film Festival one of the most significant, world-renowned screenwriters and directors and honor him for his work and dedication to the art of filmmaking,” said Jovan Marjanović, Director of the Sarajevo Film Festival. “Charlie Kaufman is an extraordinary filmmaker whose films, though filled with biting humor, compel us to contemplate existential depths of the human experience.”

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