Zijah Sokolović to receive Cinehill’s honorary award for his indelible contribution to the art of cinema • Besides celebrating his remarkable career, the beloved actor will demonstrate how to transform life’s everyday roles into art in his latest play
When this actor steps in front of the camera or onto the stage, reality is briefly suspended to make room for pure acting magic. A tried and tested artist, Zijah Sokolović has achieved astonishing things, having performed in 171 theatre productions, appearing in 57 films and 28 television series, and collecting as many as 105 awards. To this impressive list he now adds the 50 Years Award, which he will receive at the upcoming Cinehill Festival, taking place from 21 to 26 July in Fužine, in recognition of his lasting impact on cinematic art. He will be one half of this year’s duo of honorary festival guests, alongside celebrated Oscar-winner Edward Berger.
Sokolović’s work on film is marked by titles that have shaped the cinema of the region. He has woven his unmistakable acting sensibility into cult classics such as You Only Love Once by Rajko Grlić, Body Scent by Živojin Pavlović, and The Scent of Quince by Mirza Idrizović. He has left a powerful mark on Croatian filmmaking, collaborating with some of its most prominent creators: Branko Ivanda, Branko Schmidt, Antun Vrdoljak and Lordan Zafranović. With equal force and maturity, he has excelled in later works, including the recent The Pavilion by Dino Mustafić. With every new role, regardless of genre, he has proven that a film is not merely a sequence of shots, but a compendium of the very essence of human existence.
Zijah Sokolović is the author of numerous theatre productions performed across the globe, and beyond interpretation, he has worked as an acting professor at several universities in the region and throughout Europe. Beloved across the former Yugoslav region, he is best known for his monodramas An Actor… is an Actor… is an Actor and Cabares Cabarei. His cult monodrama An Actor… is an Actor… is an Actor premiered at MESS in Sarajevo in 1978, since then having been performed nearly 2,000 times. In addition to Sokolović himself, 19 other actors have performed the piece in five languages across 25 countries.
Disillusioned by the political realities of the region, Sokolović often says he almost perversely searches for the latest satirical passage to nourish his inspiration.
“What I can do, since I am an actor, is to make plays. Plays that challenge social, political, cultural and artistic forms. Plays that mirror reality in tragic or comical ways – so that we can still have a laugh when we discover who and what we are in this cosmos. Or so that tragedy and comedy, the way I understand theatre, compel the audience to vote differently in the next elections,” he once said.
This year, Cinehill will not only be a place to celebrate Sokolović’s cinematic legacy, but also a space of living theatre art. Alongside screenings of several of his films, Zijah will perform his latest play, Left Right Actor, which he has written and directed. He takes the audience behind the scenes of life itself, guided by the belief that theatre is a reality in which we not only have obligations, but roles as well.
“The time of longing to achieve something is exactly what an actor sees as a fascinating experience of the world – at least I do. To go somewhere so that something new may be born, and then to come back, changed. That is boundless richness. It is not just a journey – it is the time of living for what is yet to come”, says Zijah Sokolović.
In Fužine, he will join a line-up of outstanding guests coming to this year’s festival, including the already announced Edward Berger, director and screenwriter of All Quiet on the Western Front and Conclave, both honoured with major international awards. The retrospectives of these two filmmaking greats are only a fraction of the rich film programme featuring more than one hundred titles inncluding indie hits, festival favourites and award-winning works from around the world, all screened in the lush landscape of Gorski Kotar.
The 50 Years Award is presented in collaboration with the Croatian Film Directors Guild. Cinehill Festival is co-organised with the Municipality of Fužine and supported by the Primorje Gorski Kotar County, the Kvarner Tourist Board and the Croatian Audiovisual Centre.
For films in the Main Programme, advance ticket sales at most affordable prices started on Monday, 1 June. Small and large ticket bundles are available until 1 July, when individual tickets presale kicks off. The ticket bundles are available via the following link: core-event.co/events/cinehill-film-festival-2026-10af
