With the Serbian CAT'S CRY and the Ukrainian HONEYMOON, two films that deal with the human condition in different ways won the main prizes in the international competition of the Sofia Film Festival on March 22. Sanja Zivkovic's film, which is based on a screenplay by Yugoslavian-Serbian cult director Goran Paskaljević, who died in 2020, describes how a lack of empathy and pitiless bureaucracy complicate the lives of an ageing couple who want to look after their granddaughter, who suffers from cat-calling syndrome. Zhanna Ozirna shows how a young couple in the Ukraine find themselves in an extreme situation, with Russian occupiers having set up home underneath them - happiness and disappointment, hope and fear of death merge seamlessly.
Together with Mihai Grigor (Transilvanian Film Festival) and Dimitris Kerkinos (Thessaloniki Film Festival), I was on the jury for the Bulgarian feature film competition, where 21 films were screened - a record. The winner was Pavel G. Vesnakov's WINDLESS. TRIUMPH by Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov, the grotesque about an esoteric “Make-Bulgaria-Great-Again” mission of the Bulgarian army in the early 1990s, was honored twice in the award ceremony.
Parallel to the film festival, the “Sofia Meetings” took place, where film projects that will soon be completed were presented. A great opportunity to find films for the next FFC. The network meeting was opened with a dinner in the wonderful Bulgarian restaurant “Pod lipice (Unter den Linden)”, hosted by FilmFestival Cottbus together with Medienboard Berlin Brandenburg, German Films and Connecting Cottbus. Many thanks to the Sofia Film Festival team and Sofia Meetings for the networking and scouting opportunities in springtime Sofia!