SOFIA: Award-winning Bulgarian director Milko Lazarov is shooting his third feature film The Herd, an allegory on the subject of mass xenophobia. Bulgaria’s Red Carpet, Germany’s 42film and Luxembourg’s Amour Fou are coproducing.

VARNA: Andrey Hadjivasilev’s children’s film The Tesla Case, produced by Incomes Project, will screen in the main competition of the 40th Anniversary Golden Rose National Film Festival (23 – 29 September 2022). The film is a sequel of the 2017 The Curie Case, created and produced by the same team.

VARNA: Dušan Milić’s Serbian/Danish/Bulgarian/Italian/Greek coproduction Darkling will screen in the main competition of the 40th Anniversary Golden Rose National Film Festival (23 – 29 September 2022).

VARNA: A total of 15 feature films and 16 short films will screen in the two official competitions of the 40th Anniversary Golden Rose National Film Festival (23 – 29 September 2022). Thirteen feature films are supported with public financing, one is coproduced with the Bulgarian National Television and two are privately financed.

SOFIA: The award-winning Bulgarian directorial duo Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov have started shooting their darkish tragicomedy Triumph, coproduced by Bulgaria’s Abraxas Film and Greece’s Graal Films. Oscar nominee Maria Bakalova was announced as the lead together with Julian Kostov.

SOFIA: The Bulgarian National Film Center (BNFC) has announced the results of its drama series public support for the first time since its foundation in 1991 and after the amendments to the Film Industry Act from March 2021. The selection committee has approved one project from among 12 applications, together with one minority coproduction project.

SOFIA: The Veteran Bulgarian director Georgi Djulgerov is currently in postproduction with his period drama Memoir of a Betrayal, dedicated to the legendary 19th century anti-Ottoman revolutionary Georgi Benkovski. Known for his passionate interest in Bulgarian history and Zahari Stoyanov’s Memoirs of the Bulgarian Uprisings (1870–1876), Djulgerov focuses the narrative on some of the author’s key testimonies. The film is a local coproduction between the Bulgarian National Television and Borough Film.

SOFIA: Velislav Minekov, professor at the National Academy of Art, was reappointed as Caretaker Minister of Culture in Bulgaria. After holding the same position from May to December 2021, he was again invited by the President of Bulgaria Rumen Radev to his new interim Cabinet, which will rule the country until the next parliamentary elections on 2 October 2022.

SOFIA: Bulgarian director Ivan Vladimirov has started shooting his third feature film Plague, a period drama about an early 19th century plague epidemic in the Balkans. Inspired by a short story by prominent classic writer Yordan Yovkov (1880-1937) and written long before the COVID-19 pandemic by Boyan Biolchev, the script reveals unexpected coincidences in human reactions.

SOFIA: The 19th edition of Sofia Meetings, which took place as an exception this year on 6-12 June 2022, announced its awards. From the total number of eight awards, five were presented during an official ceremony in Sofia and three will be decided and announced later.