VARNA: Svetoslav Draganov’s debut feature Humble (aka Waterfall CEO) will screen in the main competition of the 39th Golden Rose National Film Festival (23 – 29 September 2021). The film is a Bulgarian/Romanian coproduction supported by the Bulgarian National Film Center.

VARNA: Marius Kurkinsky’s period drama A Twisted World, produced by ARS Digital Studio, will screen in the main competition of the 39th Golden Rose National Film Festival (23–29 September 2021). The film is a personal adaptation of a short story of the same name from Nikolay Haytov’s famous book Wild Stories, which was released in 1967 and translated into 28 languages.

VARNA: Pavel G. Vesnakov’s debut feature German Lessons will screen in the main competition of the 39th Golden Rose National Film Festival (23–29 September 2021). This Bulgarian/German coproduction got the Best Actor award for Julian Vergov at the Cairo IFF 2020.

VARNA: A total of 12 feature films and 15 short films will be screened in the two official competitions of the 39th Golden Rose National Film Festival, which will be held in Varna 23-29 September 2021. All feature films are supported by the Bulgarian National Film Center, and two of them are coproduced with the Bulgarian National Television.

SOFIA: The first part of the 25th anniversary of the Sofia International Film Fest took part mostly online in March 2021, while the second part started in a physical format on 14 September 2021. Festival director Stefan Kitanov hopes the celebration will be a feast of cinema with numerous new films and prestigious guests.

SOFIA: The Bulgarian National Film Centre (BNFC) has announced it will launch calls for funding which have been stalled since the beginning of the year. Calls for all types of films, distribution and exhibition support are rescheduled for October 2021. The decisions for the grants are expected before the end of 2021.

SOFIA: The acclaimed documentary director Tonislav Hristov completed the Helsinki shooting of his fiction debut The Good Driver on 6 August 2021. The film is a coproduction between Finland’s Making Movies Oy and Bulgaria’s Soul Food, and was supported by Eurimages.

SOFIA: Kamen Balkanski, Head of Creative Europe’s Media office – Bulgaria since 2004, has been appointed Acting Director of the Bulgarian National Film Center. He is replacing Jana Karaivanova, forced to resign prematurely in pursuance of an official order issued on 17 June 2021 by the Caretaker Minister of Culture Velislav Minekov.

SOFIA: The Caretaker Bulgarian Minister of Culture Velislav Minekov dismissed Jana Karaivanova from her post of executive director of the Bulgarian National Film Center on 17 June 2021. The name of the new executive director has not been announced yet.

SOFIA: The entertaining low budget musical comedy The Naked Truth about Zhiguli Band directed by Victor Bojinov has had a record number of 113,059 admissions and over 500,000 EUR gross since its theatrical release on 16 April 2021. Despite the reduced capacity of cinemas, the film has entered the Bulgarian Top 5 for the last 30 years.