While Bosnia-Hercegovina has certainly taken some initiative on the cinematic front, such as the annual Sarajevo Film Festival held in late August, the film exhibition infrastructure is not as developed as it is in the rest of Europe. Megaplex fever, which has caught most of the movie-going world by storm, is nowhere to be seen, with the majority of the country's theaters being independently owned and operated. The quality of venues varies tremendously, from older theaters that look more like glorified high school auditoriums with a skeleton staff to more professional-looking theaters that were built after the 1992-1996 siege of Sarajevo.
Theatrical programming is dominated by star-driven mainstream Americana shown in their original language with Bosnian subtitles (which also serve as a great way to learn the Bosnian language). While I was in the city, the movies in rotation ranged from two months to two years old-- "Hope Floats", "Life is Beautiful", "Stepmom", "The Thin Red Line", "Addicted to Love", and even "Ace Ventura 2". The remaining screens were occupied by exploitational fare, including some homegrown guns-and-gangster sagas and the direct-to-video Dom Deluise parody "The Godson".
Ticket prices run the gamut from 3-5 DM (approximately $2-3 US), and it is difficult to imagine how these theaters manage to stay in business. In additional to the low ticket prices, theaters only have two screenings per day (typically at 6 and 8 pm), and have no concession sales. In the typical theatrical exhibition business model, theaters maximize revenues through maximizing the number of screenings and via concession sales, which often are responsible for the bulk of movie house profitability. The reason for this is that film rentals (paid to the distributor) typically constitute 50-70% of the admission price, leaving little from which theater owners can recoup wages, rent, other expenses, and profits. It was even more troubling to see that the theaters in Sarajevo were only selling to 60% capacity on average, which further eroded the revenue potential.
