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Bulgarian film wins Grand Prix at 15th Sofia International Film Festival
By Martin Blaney | March 25, 2011
In photo jury president Fridrik Thor Fridriksson presents Grand Prix to Shelter's Dragomir Sholev, courtesy Sofia Film Festival
Dragomir Sholev’s feature debut Shelter became the first Bulgarian film to win the Grand Prix at the 15thedition of the Sofia International Film Festival’s (SIFF) .
The drama about a 12 year-old boy prepared to run away from home after being neglected by his parents had premiered in San Sebastian’s New Directors competition last September. It also took home the Kodak Award for Best Bulgarian Feature Film and the festival’s Audience Award.
Speaking at the gala closing ceremony in Sofia’s National Palace of Culture, Shelter’s producer Rossitsa Valkanova of Klas Film said that it had been “a specially important statement this year that two Bulgarian films [Shelter and Viktor Chouchkov Jr’s Tilt] were selected for the first time for the International Competition.”
The International Jury led by Icelandic director Fridrik Thor Fridriksson and including former Connecting Cottbus artistic director Gabriele Brunnenmeyer and filmmakers Kamen Kalev, Alvaro Brechner and Ognjen Svilicic, gave their Special Jury Award to Selim Gunes’ White As Snow and the prize for Best Director to Joao Nuno Pinto for America, starring Russian actress Chulpan Khamatova, while the FIPRESCI International Critics Prize went to Ola Simonsson and Johannes Stjärne Nilsson’s Sound Of Noise.
Meanwhile, the Sofia Municipality Award for services to world cinema were presented to Bulgarian actor Russi Chanev, film directors Claude Lelouch and Otar Iosseliani as well as the legendary actress Claudia Cardinale who attended a gala screening of a re-cut version of Visconti’s The Leopard.
More than 260 international guests came to Sofia for the jubilee edition, ranging from Volker Schlöndorff, Sylvia Kristel, and Andrzej Zulawski, through Aleksey Uchitel and Goran Paskaljevic to Srdjan Koljevic and Sarajevo Film Festival’s Mirsad Purivatra.
Schlöndorff was in Sofia for the board meeting of the European Film Academy, but also attended a screening of The Tin Drum – Director’s Cut and signed autographs at the launch of the Bulgarian translation of his autobiography Light, Shadow and Movement: My Life and Films in the Kolibri publishing house’s Amarcord series.
In addition, the festival programmed recent German films like Feo Aladag’s When We Leave, Sergei Loznitsa’s My Joy and Chris Kraus’ The Poll Diaries and Tom Tykwer’s Three as well as such co-productions as Benedek Fliegauf’s Womb, Mathieu Amalric’s Tournee, Srdjan Koljevic’s The Women with a Broken Nose and Oleg Novkovic’s White White World.
The team of the Stuttgart-based Robert Bosch Foundation came to Sofia with four young German producers to meet 13 Bulgarian counterparts who pitched them new projects in a form of speed dating. Moreover, there was a screening of four short films made by teams of German and Eastern European filmmakers as part of the Robert Bosch Co-Production Prize.
And local filmmaker Nadejda Koseva, who was one of the contributors to the omnibus film Lost & Found, was able to show her 27-minute short Take Two which was produced by Stefan Kitanov’s Art Fest and Herbert Schwering’s Cologne-based Coin Film with support from the Bosch Foundation.
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