Popular in Bulgaria for his work with local actors (Ivan Burnev as Jan Dite in I Served the King of England, 2006) the distinguished Czech New Wave director will participate in an official ceremony chaired by NATFA’s rector Prof. Dr. Sc. Lubomir Halachev. Menzel will also present to the Sofia audience his latest feature The Don Juans, a personal point of view on Mozart’s Don Giovanni produced by MediaPro Pictures.

Previous NATFA honorary doctors are Hungarian Istvan Szabo, American David Lynch, Russian Nikita Mikhalkov, Spanish Carlos Saura, Bulgarian Leon Daniel.

Goran Paskaljevic will be the 28th personality to receive the Sofia Award for outstanding contribution in cinema, a joint initiative of Sofia Municipality and the Sofia International Film Festival since 2005.

In the frame of the Sofia IFF the respected Belgrade director will present his 2012 Serbian-French-Croatian coproduction When Day Breaks dedicated to the Belgrade Judenlager Semlin Nazi camp and coproduced by Serbian Nova Film, France’s Arsam and Croatia’s Maxima Film.

Parallel to this, the Sofia IFF is showing the panorama “Czechoslovakian New Wave. 1969, Forbidden Films” and a Focus on Serbian cinema with 5 films and 15 guests.