Two awards - for Best Documentary and the Award of the Bulgarian National Cinematheque received The Boy Who Was A King at the 19th Festival of the Bulgarian Documentary and Animation Film "Golden Rhyton". Andrey Paounov's film was first screened during the 16th Sofia International Film Festival in March 2012.
"Golden Rhyton"'s Jury - Kostadin Bonev, a president and members Nikolay Mihaylov, Andrey Tzvetkov, Lyudmila Dyakova and Penka Kalinkova, awarded more...
Prize Money at Record 79,000 Euros
The Golden Doves of the 55th International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film were presented on Saturday night. A total of 16 prizes were awarded during the closing festivities in Leipzig’s Central Theater, with a record 79,500 euros of prize money having been awarded during the festival week.
The prestigious Golden Dove in the International Competition Documentary Film went to COLOMBIANOS by the Swedish filmmaker Tora M&...
Sofia International Film Festival (Sofia IFF) is aimed to promote significant and innovative works in the contemporary world cinema for local audience and regional (Bulgarian and Balkan) cinema to international audience, as well as to encourage the cooperation between local and international filmmakers.
The 17th Sofia IFF will be held from 7 to 17 March 2013 (main programme) with an additional
week (18-24 March).
Sofia IFF is organized by Art Fest Ltd. in association with RFF International....
The European Film Academy (EFA) revealed the selection of 47 titles
from which in November the nominations for the annual awards will be
announced. Among them there are two Sofia Meetings’ projects.
The first is the directorial debut of Valery Yordanov and Ivan Vladimirov, Sneakers. The film was first shown for the first time at the Moscow IFF, where it received with the Jury’s Special Mention and award of the Federation of the Russian Cinema Clubs and was nominated for “Gol...
American Foundation for Bulgaria has the pleasure to invite you to participate in the selection for the program of the 8-th Students’ Film Festival EARLY BIRD!
“Early Bird” is open for national and European participation. All students from European universities/schools, who have not still completed their education in film/tv are invited to enter for competition fiction, documentary or animation student films produced in the school.
The films sent for selection m...
212 feature films (110 world or international premieres)
16 medium length films (12 world or international premieres)
144 short films (94 world or international premieres)
60 films in the Canadian Student Film Festival
A Chinese film “Million Dollar Crocodile” for the opening
...
The President:
Wim Wenders, Director, Germany
Wim Wenders attended the Academy of Film & Television in Munich, worked as a film critic for various German publications, and was a founding member of Filmverlag der Autoren. In 1976 he set up his own production company, Road Movies, and, in 2002, Reverse Angle. Often hailed as one of the most important German directors on the international scene, Wenders has received various international awards, including the Golden Lion (TH...
Romanian Everybody in Our Family
received Sarajevo's Grand Prize - the Heart of Sarajevo on Saturday.
Director Radu Jude's film was presented as project during Sofia Meetings in 2009 and is the latest successful title that started its way from Sofia.
The Parafin Prince
by Pavel G. Vesnakov was selected for the Competition programme of
short films and received a Special Jury Mention. Vesnakov is the Jameson
Short Film Award winner with Vlakove at 2011 Sofia International Film Fes...
Sofia's Last Ambulance is on a winning spree! Last night Iliyan Metev's film was awarded with Best Documentary Award for a title over 30 min. long at Karlovy Vary IFF.
After receiving Canal 4's special Visionary award from the Critics' Week at Cannes, Sofia's Last Ambulance
triumphed in the Documentary Competition at the Czech festival. Iliyan
Metev's film is another successful Sofia Meetings' project and is
selected next for the Sarajevo IFF.
Another film that was presented duri...
Yavor Gardev presented his project Contra during the Moscow Co-Production Forum at Moscow Business Square. Contra was first presented during Sofia Meetings,
and in Moscow it competed with 23 more projects, selected from more
than 100 applications. The selection committee featured Mira Staleva,
director of the co-production market at the Sofia Film Festival; Riina
Sildos, director of the Baltic Event, Marie-Pierre Valle, creative director of Wild Bunch Distribution; Simone Baumann, G...
Writer Dimitre Dinev has been living in Austria for years now. As a co-writer of Anja Salomonowitz’ debut feature Spain, he was a special guest at the 16th Sofia IFF. The following are excerpts from the press conference that turned into a cosy conversation between Dinev and the film critic Antonia Kovacheva, and the P.S. for four eyes and two swings in front of the festival center Matti’D.
How did you meet Anja Salomonwitz and how did you work together on the script of Spain?
An...
Cinema City Festival will gather some of the most significant European names from the world of film. They will transfer valuable knowledge, experiences and contacts to young filmmakers, but also to those already considered to be successful professionals. For the first time our country will be the host to board members of the prestigious European Film Academy, the most significant film institution in Europe. Numerous directors and producers, such as Nik Powell, co-founder of Virgin Record...
Day before the end of the 65th edition of the International Film Festival in Cannes, the Critic's Week gave away their awards. The jury was presided by director Bertrand Bonello, whose latest feature House of Tolerance was screened during the 16th edition of Sofia International Film Festival. During SIFF's industry event Sofia Meetings Iliyan Metev's film Sofia's Last Ambulance was presented. Sofia's Last Ambulance was in competition at Critics' Week and now received Canal 4's special Visionar...
Sebastian Leutner creates animated worlds, which combine reality and fiction. 34 y.o. VFX producer from German Pixomondo received an Oscar for his work on Martin Scorsese’s Hugo in 2012.
In 2008 Sebastian Leutner co-produced Boris Despodov and Andrey Paounov’s German-Bulgarian co-production Three Sisters and Andrey.
The animation won many awards, including Jameson Award for Best
Bulgarian Short at Sofia International Film Festival in 2009. Leutner is
also among the co-producers o...
During the meeting with the audience after the screening of his film Baggage
in the Cinema House, Danis Tanovic said that he’s actually quite a
joyful person and loves to laugh. But in our conversation he was quite
serious and said that certain things make him quite pessimistic. Going
back through his films, it is easy to spot the humor in all of them, but
it usually serves to lighten up a very dark situation, and to help you
through it. Perhaps, the more seriously you look towards...
In 2006 a group of friends who call themselves The League of Noble Peers, shot the documentary Steal This Film. The subject of the film is the fight between world’s biggest torrent Piratebay and
several smaller, also based in Sweden websites, offering free but
according to a lot of countries’ laws, illegal downloading of films on
one hand, and Hollywood majors on the other. The film is notable for its
critical analysis of an alleged regulatory capture attempt performed by
the Hollyw...
The theme of the second round table is: New urban spaces and
creativity.Cities play a vital role in harnessing creativity for
economic and social development. Policy makers and government agencies
are increasingly taking account of cultural creativity when planning
economic policy and of the role culture can play in urban renewal. This
session will explore the issues of how to preserve the ecological
balance and social identity of urban communities, embedded in natural,
cul...
Karin SchyleThis year the Robert Bosch Stiftung carried out a training for short and documentary projects with a focus on Black Sea and Caucasus during Sofia Meetings.
Three teams (director and producer) from the Caucasian countries
Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, three teams from the Black Sea countries
Moldova, Romania, Ukraine and further four teams from Bulgaria were
invited to participate in it. The event was organized in cooperation
with the partners of Тhe Co-Production Prize
o...
Feature Films
Nespresso Grand Prize for La Semaine de la Critique Jury : Bertrand Bonello (president) and film critics Francisco Ferreira (Expresso, Portugal), Akiko Kobari (Yukan Fuji, Japan), Robert Koehler (Variety, USA) and Hanns-Georg Rodek (Die Welt, Germany).
AQUÍ Y ALLÁ Antonio Méndez Esparza
Visionary Prize France 4 Jury : Céline Sciamma (president) and young film critics Victor-Emmanuel Boinem (CineBel, Belgium), KIM Sehee (Cine21, South Korea), Ryan Latt...
The international Forum Balkan Visions: Creativity For The Future In
South – East Europe was inagurated yesterday at the presence of Yordanka
Fandakova, the Mayor of Sofia, Georgi Stoev, the deputy minister of
Culture, Francesco Bandarin, UNESCO Assistant Director-General for
Culture, and Stefan Kitanov, the director of Sofia International Film
Festival as part of the 16th edition of the festival. The Forum,
organized with the support of Sofia Municipality, will include three
ro...
If I ask your friends to describe you, what would they say?
They
would say that I am someone that can`t stop moving. Combined with my
cinema profession in Madrid I play also on a latin music band in Paris.
The result: last week in Guadalajara, now in Sofia (laughing), and next
week going to Paris for a concert there. So my friends also usually say
that they can never see me.
What qualities do you feel a successful artist should have?
I
think, and I hope there is not a...
The official programme of the 16th Sofia International Film Festival
will end tonight with the gala screening of Borislav Kolev's
documentary debut Stoichkov.
The
festival presented a total of 260 films from 52 countries from all
over the world. Over 300 international guests came to Sofia, amongst
them were directors, producers, festival directors as well as media and
film experts.
The Award Ceremony took place on the 17th of March in Hall 1 of the National Palace of Cu...
How did “Sofia Meetings” exactly help in the production of movies of young Bulgarian filmmakers and in finding partners?
It helped in establishing contacts with extremely helpful and
experienced people, with sharing of the experiences of these people by
raising the level of writing the screenplays, screenwriting development,
the basics of the regulation mechanisms for doing co-productions. It
turned into a know-how on how to do the things and how they happen.
Which a...
You chose to go with your team to some villages near Sofia. Did you find any interesting places?
We
toured several villages across the gorge of the Iskar River. I think
the most interesting place we found was an old, completely deserted
railway station. There were no people and the small building was full of
remnants of past life. Among the waste, bird nests and broken things, I
found a very old writing desk. It was astonishing that on the inner
side of one of its doors were post...
This year Sofia International Film Festival has a Young Jury as well.
We
have invited the film fans of 25 years of age and younger who reside in
Sofia and are willing to dedicate March to watching films, to apply for
the Young Jury. We were expecting to receive 3 reviews, consisting of 3
senteces for the last 3 films they have watched.
Based on the
applications we have received we have chosen the following young people:
Filip Morozov, Kostadin Mavrodiev, Iv-Kristiаn Angel...
