The success of this event, combined with the legacy of Mirsad Purivatra's and Izeta Građević's wartime film screenings from 1992, led to the establishment of an annual festival.

The festival has been attended by celebrities such as Robert De Niro, Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Emile Hirsch, Orlando Bloom, Daniel Craig, Danny Glover, John Malkovich, Morgan Freeman, Oliver Stone, John Cleese, Steve Buscemi, Michael Fassbender, Jeremy Irons, Juliette Binoche, Bono Vox, Coolio, Mickey Rourke, Michael Moore, Gérard Depardieu, Darren Aronofsky, Gillian Anderson, Kevin Spacey, Eric Cantona, Benicio del Toro, Tim Roth, Mads Mikkelsen, Jesse Eisenberg, Alexander Payne, Meg Ryan and many others.

The 2001 winner of the Sarajevo Film Festival, Danis Tanović's No Man's Land, went on to win an Oscar in the United States.

The CineLink Market each year presents about 10 finest regional projects for feature-length fiction films, also offering festival guests a special opportunity to meet with the assembled regional industry, with emphasis on young filmmakers, producers and directors presenting their latest projects, productions and works in progress, with highlights of the regional production presented to international distributors, TV-buyers and festival programmers, making CineLink the most important international market place for new features from Southeast Europe.

Each year, more than two hundred applications are received, and only eighty are carefully chosen to attend a six-day training led by some of the most prominent film professionals in the world.