Irina Kanusheva, acting director of the Bulgarian National Film Center (www.nfc.bg), commented, “This is a way to underline the importance of coproductions with Bulgarian participation.”
The emotional story of a metal worker from Ljubljana who, in 1986, has a mental breakdown over an unexpected prize by the communist regime and spends ten years in a psychiatric clinic is a Bulgarian minority coproduction. The Bulgarian producer Art Fest (www.siff.bg) received supported of 120,000 EUR. The film will be screening out of competition.
The second coproduction completed in Bulgaria in the past year, Spain by director Anja Salomonowitz, written in collaboration with the Vienna-based Bulgarian writer Dimitré Dinev, will compete for the “Golden Rose” Grand Prix. The Austrian-Bulgarian coproduction was screened at the 2012 Berlinale (www.berlinale.de) Forum program. The story of a foreigner desperately seeking his way from Austria to Spain is also a Bulgarian minority coproduction. Coproducer Camera Ltd (www.camera.bg) received 172,817 EUR in funding.
The key organizer of the festival, the most significant event for the Bulgarian feature films, is the National Film Centre, acting in cooperation with the Ministry of Culture (mc.government.bg), the Varna Municipality (www.varna.bg), the Varna Festival and Congress Centre (www.fccvarna.bg) and Bulgarian National Television and the Bulgarian National Film Archive (www.bnf.bg).
The festival’s two competitive sections will screen 13 long features and 10 shorts. Nine features were produced with public support and four were made with private money. Three of them premiered at different international films festivals, two were shown at the “Love is Folly” (www.loveisfolly.ida.bg) Varna IFF in August, and another three were already theatrically distributed.
The festival programme includes Bulgarian masterpieces from the past, with 2012 marking the anniversaries of Bulgarian film figures including scriptwriter Angel Wagenstein, director Lyudmil Staikov and actors Stefan Danailov, Emilia Radeva, Djoko Rosic, and Valcho Kamarashev.
Feature Films Competition
- I AM YOU, director PETЕR POPZLATEV
- FAITH, LOVE AND WHISKY, director KRISTINA NIKOLOVA
- JULY, director KIRIL STANKOV
- INCOGNITA, director MIHAIL PANDOURSKY
- SPAIN, director ANJA SALOMONOWITZ
- RAPID REACTION CORPS, director STANISLAV DONCHEV
- MIGRATION OF THE BELTED BONITO, director LYUDMIL TODOROV
- ONE MORE DREAM, director NIKOLAY MUTAFCHIEV
- PISTOL, BRIEFCASE AND THREE STINKING BARRELS, director GEORGI KOSTOV
- PUZZLE, director IVO STAYKOV
- SUNNYSIDE, director ILIYA KOSTOV
- THECOLOR OF THE CHAMELEON,director EMIL HRISTOV
- THE FOREIGNER, director NIKI ILIEV
Short Films Competition
- THE CROSSING, director Radoslav Kamburov
- VIOLETA, ZHORO AND ME, director LYUBOMIR POPOV
- DOODLE, director LYUBOMIR PECHEV
- YELLOW DOG, director MARIA NIKOLOVA
- HIEROGLYPH, THE, director ALBENA IVANOVA
- I AM GOING TO ITALY, director IVAYLO МARKOV
- PARAFFIN PRINCE, THE, director PAVEL G. VESNAKOV
- JUMP directors PETAR VALCHANOV, KRISTINA GROZEVA
- SALTY & SWEET, director POLLY GENCHEVA
- WELCOME TO СОФИЯ, director PETRA GEORGIEVA
