SOFIA: The Bulgarian National Film Center allotted 1,856,000 EUR / 3,630,000 BGN at its first session on 29 June 2017. Seven projects, including two feature films with higher budgets, one feature film with lower budget, one debut feature and three short films, received production funding. The development of five feature films was also supported.
SOFIA: The Bulgarian Film Academy announced its annual awards with Ivan Pavlov’s black and white Memories of Fear (produced by Art 47) winning the Best Film award for 2016. Krassimir Kroumov-Gretz, a highly respected writer, director and film analyst, was posthumously awarded for the same film together with highly respected composer Bojidar Petkov, both having passed away in 2015.
SOFIA: Mila Voinikova represents Bulgaria as a European Film Promotion 2017 Producer on the Move. For eight years she has been working at Miramar Film founded in 2001 by Ilian Djevelekov, Matey Konstantinov and Georgy Dimitrov.
SOFIA: Former Deputy Minister of Culture Boil Banov was appointed as the new Minister of Culture on 5 May 2017 under Prime Minister Boyko Borisov. He succeeds Rashko Mladenov, Minister of Culture in the caretaker government appointed by the President Rumen Radev on 26 January 2017.
SOFIA: Yoon-Ha Chang’s I Go Back Home – Jimmy Scott, produced by Germany’s Kemper Music Production, grabbed the Best Documentary Film Award of the Master of Art International Documentary Film Festival.
SOFIA: Ilian Djevelekov is in postproduction with his second feature film Omnipresent. The release is planned for October 2017.
SOFIA: Swedish digital entertainment company Modern Times Group (MTG) is on the point of liquidating its business in Bulgaria. According to several domestic publications, quoting the Swedish business magazine Dagens Industri, MTG is ready to sell Bulgaria’s second private national TV channel Nova TV and the newly founded film distribution company Lenta Films.
SOFIA: On 9 April 2017 Bulgaria’s public TV channel BNT starts airing the first segment of a total of 1000 minutes of national animated films. The series is part of the ongoing project marking the centennial of Bulgarian film.
SOFIA: The Sofia Municipality plans to implement a ten-year strategy Sofia - Creative City of Film, focusing on the creative and industrial aspects of film, and stimulating local authorities to set up cinema as a priority during the next decade. The core of the strategy is to establish a financial fund aiming at supporting the production of Bulgarian debuts and films dedicated to younger audiences.
SOFIA: Ralitza Petrova’s debut feature Godless won the Grand Prix of the international competition at the 21st Sofia International Film Festival (9-19 March 2017). The Bulgarian/Danish/French coproduction was also awarded best Bulgarian film.
