Artificial intelligence, once a buzzword reserved for VFX experiments and early adopters, now across the film industry generates growing interest. The Sarajevo Film Festival, Southeast Europe’s flagship film event, found itself at the forefront of this transformation when it set out to rescue the earliest works from its heritage.
Why AI matters in film restoration
For many film professionals, AI is still a double-edged sword. On one hand, it offers a lifeline to aging archives, unlocking materials otherwise lost to time. On the other hand, it raises fundamental questions about authenticity and artistic integrity.
Above many others, filmmakers worry about AI video enhancement introducing a “synthetic” look that dilutes the creative intent of the original. The potential is undeniable. Properly used, AI upscaler can save thousands of hours of manual restoration work.
Case study: Sarajevo Film Festival revives lost rolls
Background
The Sarajevo Film Festival is an international film event with a special focus on South-East Europe, shining an international spotlight on films, talent, and future projects from the region.
Its high-quality programming, strong industry segment, and its educational and networking platforms for young filmmakers confirm its status as the leading film festival in the region, recognized by both professionals and wider audiences. CineLink Industry Days, features the Talents Sarajevo programme, a cornerstone platform for emerging filmmakers and professionals that focuses on skill-building, training, and cross-border collaboration, offering participants the chance to develop their craft, engage with industry challenges, and build enduring connections within the global film community.
However, a significant part of this legacy was at risk. During the early years of the Talents Sarajevo program, short films created under the Sarajevo City of Film initiative were stored in now-obsolete formats. This initiative, run by the Obala Art Center and Sarajevo Film Festival, was launched to discover, support, and promote the talent of filmmakers in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the wider region, while encouraging collaboration and the exchange of experience in creating joint film works. Between 2008 and the present, more than 300 young directors, screenwriters, producers, actors, directors of photography, and editors made their short films in Sarajevo. Original copies produced on 35mm film rolls were inaccessible to the festival team, while the only remaining versions were on DVDs or compressed digital files, some containing severe artifacts.
As a result, defining works from the festival’s formative years were effectively locked away, unable to be shared with new audiences or showcased at special festival occasions.
The Challenge
With its Talents Sarajevo archive at risk, the Sarajevo Film Festival approached TensorPix after seeing its AI video enhancer capabilities presented at CineLink Industry Days in 2024. The goal: restore the earliest shorts to a screening-ready standard.
But the task was challenging itself. Source materials were scattered across DVD PAL and H264 1080p files, riddled with compression artifacts. Early tests with TensorPix Ultra 3 upscaler showed improvements but still left visible degradation.
Together, the festival’s technical staff and TensorPix engineers embarked on an iterative process, customizing the soon-to-launch Ultra 4 AI video enhancement filter. Trained on the largest and most diverse dataset yet, Ultra 4 AI video enhancer enabled the team to upscale the shorts to crisp 2K resolution, the optimal balance between the degraded source and modern screening standards.
“Working with TensorPix marked our first real step into AI for film restoration. We didn’t just rescue old files, but learned how AI could become a partner in preserving the festival's heritage. Having open, ongoing discussions with the TensorPix team was crucial for understanding how to fine-tune technology to the nature of our materials. Thanks to this collaboration, the earliest Talents Sarajevo works can now be screened in any modern cinema” — Maša Marković, Head of Industry, and Armin Hadžić, Head of Operations and New Business Development, Sarajevo Film Festival
The Solution
TensorPix deployed its Ultra 4 AI video enhancement filter trained on the largest dataset yet to upscale and restore the shorts to 2K resolution. The project involved iterative testing, custom model tuning, and continuous collaboration between the festival’s Cinelink Industry Days team and TensorPix engineers. Open dialogue and tailored filter adjustments enabled the optimal balance between restoration quality and authenticity.
“This project pushed our technology to new limits. We were pushing deployment of Ultra 4, our most powerful model yet, while simultaneously tailoring it to treat severely degraded materials. Training the model on over 200 million parameters and then adding custom builds let us target the specific issues in these videos. Seeing the shorts screened at high-res quality after years of being locked away was one of the most rewarding milestones for our team.” — Matej Ciglenečki, CTO, TensorPix
Conclusion
The Sarajevo Film Festival collaboration with TensorPix shows how AI video enhancer can safeguard cultural memory without erasing artistic intent. AI does not replace filmmakers, editors, or colorists, but does what was once hard to reach and in the majority of cases expensive, and now available within limited time and budget.
