Dane Komljen’s work unfolds at the convergence of narrative, experimental, and essayistic cinema, exploring notions of the body, space, utopia, and being together. It traces a movement from engagement with specific architectural sites and the layering of personal and collective memory toward the unfolding of utopian fictions inhabited by both existing and staged communities. Working with actors, non-actors, and performing artists, he builds worlds around groups seeking new forms of relating to one another, dissolving the boundaries of singular bodies and identities at the threshold between the man-made and the non-human. Employing an array of digital, analogue, and celluloid materials, Komljen envisions cinema as a space of possibility, transformation, and shapeshifting.

Komljen was born in 1986 in Banja Luka, SFR Yugoslavia and studied at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts, Belgrade, Serbia, Le Fresnoy, Tourcoing, France and Universität der Künste, Berlin.

His most recent feature, Desire Lines, premiered at the Festival del Film Locarno in 2025.⁠ ⁠His second feature, Afterwater, received the Best Film Award at the Seville Film Festival. His shorts Phantasiesätze and Our Body were recognized with the Fundación Casa Wabi Mantarraya Award at Locarno and the Prix UIP European Film Academy at Rotterdam, respectively. His student short, I Already Am Everything I Want to Have, won Third Cinéfondation Prize at the Festival de Cannes. His films have screened at Berlinale, Cinéma du Réel, FID Marseille, New York Film Festival, among others, and his work has been presented at institutions such as the ICA in London, Volksbühne in Berlin, UnionDocs in New York, and the Lagos Biennale.