For more than half a century, Belgrade has occupied a distinctive place on the international cinema map. In 2026, that history will continue with a new edition of FEST, the Belgrade International Film Festival, bringing filmmakers, producers, industry professionals and audiences together in the Serbian capital for a celebration of international cinema.
Among the international professionals joining the FEST 2026 jury will be producer, author and entrepreneur Slavica Bogdanov, founder of the Empowering Entertainment group of brands. She will serve alongside established European film-industry figures including Italian producer Gianluca Curti, President and CEO of Minerva Pictures, and British filmmaker Julian Richards, founder of international film sales company Jinga Films.
For Bogdanov, the appointment represents more than another professional recognition. It brings together several strands of a career spanning filmmaking, screenwriting, film financing, publishing, entrepreneurship and, increasingly, the creation of new models for connecting films with audiences.
From “A Brave New World” to an International Film Institution
FEST began in Belgrade on January 9, 1971, under the remarkably appropriate title “A Brave New World.” The inaugural festival opened at Dom Sindikata with Robert Altman’s MASH* and was originally conceived as an annual presentation of some of the most important films of the international season. Over subsequent decades, FEST developed into a major fixture of Belgrade’s cultural life and an important meeting point between Yugoslav—and later Serbian—audiences and world cinema.
Its historical importance extended well beyond the films themselves. During the Yugoslav era, FEST occupied an unusual position between East and West and welcomed major international filmmakers and stars at a time when those encounters were considerably less common in the region. Its guests over the years included figures such as Robert De Niro, Jack Nicholson, Kirk Douglas, Miloš Forman, Francis Ford Coppola, Roman Polanski and Pier Paolo Pasolini.
That legacy gives FEST an identity that cannot simply be manufactured by launching another film festival. It carries more than five decades of cultural memory, international cinema and generations of audiences who discovered important filmmakers through its screens.
FEST 2026 now arrives during another period of profound transformation for cinema. Streaming has altered distribution, filmmakers increasingly build audiences beyond traditional theatrical channels, international financing has become more interconnected, and the boundaries separating film festivals, digital platforms, media and direct-to-consumer entertainment are becoming increasingly porous.
It is against that backdrop that Bogdanov joins this year’s jury.
An International Jury Spanning Production, Direction and Distribution
The jury brings together professionals approaching cinema from different sides of the international business.
Italy’s Gianluca Curti is President and CEO of Minerva Pictures, the Rome-based independent production and distribution company whose history dates to 1953. Minerva has produced more than 120 films and 40 documentaries and built a library exceeding 2,850 titles, including approximately 1,500 for which it controls worldwide rights. Its activities now span production, distribution, television, publishing and digital exploitation.
Curti himself has spent decades in production, distribution and the international expansion of Minerva. His career has also extended into film-festival leadership and the wider institutional Italian audiovisual sector.
British filmmaker Julian Richards brings another perspective. As a director, his credits include Darklands, The Last Horror Movie, Summer Scars, Shiver, Reborn and Daddy’s Girl. In 2006, Richards also founded Jinga Films, an international sales company specializing particularly in genre cinema and representing a substantial catalogue of films in the worldwide marketplace.
Bogdanov’s background adds yet another dimension: the intersection of creative development, production, financing, entrepreneurship, publishing and emerging digital distribution.
Slavica Bogdanov: Building an Empowering Entertainment Ecosystem
Bogdanov’s relationship with entertainment has never been confined to a single role.
An international bestselling author, screenwriter, producer and business strategist, she has spent decades developing intellectual property and businesses while working across publishing, film production and film financing. Her screenwriting work has received numerous international awards, while her production experience has included independently produced feature films and the complicated realities of assembling projects, financing, talent and distribution.
Those experiences eventually became the foundation for Empowering Entertainment, an expanding group of entertainment brands designed around a larger idea: that books, movies, games, journalism, education, talent development and digital distribution do not necessarily have to exist as isolated businesses.
Empowering Entertainment Publishing has developed an extensive catalogue of books and entertainment properties, while Empowering Entertainment Magazine has expanded the company’s editorial reach into film, entertainment, culture, personalities and the rapidly changing business behind them.
The ecosystem also includes FilmFunding101, through which Bogdanov translates decades of business and film-financing experience into books and educational programs for producers and filmmakers attempting to navigate one of independent cinema’s most persistent challenges: finding and structuring the capital required to move a project from screenplay to production.
But one of the most ambitious pieces of that ecosystem is still being built.
The EE Vault and a Different Vision of Entertainment
The EE Vault was conceived not merely as another streaming library, but as a broader entertainment destination.
The platform brings together movies, books and games within a single subscription environment, creating an unusual intersection between forms of entertainment that are normally separated across different services. Rather than requiring audiences to move between a streaming platform, an ebook service and a gaming destination, the long-term vision behind the Vault is to create one expanding entertainment universe in which those formats coexist.
That concept also creates opportunities on the other side of the equation.
For independent filmmakers, digital platforms can potentially become more than places where completed films disappear into enormous catalogues. They can become extensions of festivals, promotional events, filmmaker conversations and curated screenings capable of connecting individual works with specifically interested audiences.
That possibility is particularly relevant to Bogdanov’s involvement with FEST.
Could the Film Festival Extend Beyond the Theater?
Alongside her jury participation, Bogdanov has begun discussing with FEST the possibility of exploring an online extension of selected elements of the festival through Empowering Entertainment’s digital screening infrastructure.
The concept would not seek to replace the physical festival experience that has defined FEST for generations. Instead, it could potentially extend selected films or festival programming beyond Belgrade.
Subject to FEST’s programming decisions, filmmaker participation and the necessary distribution rights, selected competition films, jury selections, award winners or special presentations could potentially receive limited online screening windows. Ticketed digital screenings could also create an additional revenue opportunity while allowing international audiences unable to travel to Serbia to participate in part of the FEST experience.
Filmmaker introductions, interviews and online Q&As could eventually expand that model further.
The discussions remain exploratory, but they reflect a much larger question confronting festivals around the world: does a film festival still have to end when audiences leave the theater?
Returning to Belgrade — From Filmmaker to Juror
There is also a personal dimension to Bogdanov’s participation.
Born in Belgrade before building much of her professional career internationally, returning to the city as a member of the FEST jury creates an unusual convergence of origin and career: a filmmaker and entrepreneur returning to one of the region’s historic cinematic institutions not simply as an audience member, but as one of the people entrusted with recognizing the work of other filmmakers.
For Bogdanov, the responsibility is ultimately about the films.
A jury sees the finished work, but behind every finished independent film lies something audiences rarely witness: years of writing, rejection, financing, rewriting, casting, production problems, impossible decisions and the extraordinary persistence required to get a story onto a screen at all.
That understanding will inevitably accompany her into the jury room.
FEST began more than half a century ago with the words “A Brave New World.”
In 2026, cinema finds itself entering another one.
And Slavica Bogdanov will have a seat at the table as FEST helps decide which storytellers deserve to be part of it.
