Bulgaria at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival 2017
The 58th edition of the Thessaloniki International Film Festival opened on the 2nd of November. The Balkan Survey Competition Program includes 3 Bulgarian films supported by the Bulgarian National Film Center.
¾ by Ilian Metev – awarded a Golden Leopard in the Filmmakers of the Present competition at Locarno IFF and winner of the Best Director award at the Golden Rose Festival of Bulgarian Feature Film 2017, the short film Red Light by Toma Waszarow and the Bulgarian minority co-production Requiem for Mrs. J by Bojan Vuletic.
A side program of the Balkan Survey called From Words to Images will present movies based on literature classics. Bulgaria participates with two films: The Goat Horn by Metodi Andonov (1972) and The Peach Thief by Valo Radev (1964).
Two more Bulgarian co-productions realized with the financial support of the Bulgarian Film Center also participate at the 58th TIFF.
Son of Sofia by Elina Psykou (Greece, France, Bulgaria) with Bulgarian co-producer Chouchkov Brothers is in the International Competition and will also be shown in the Greek Film Festival Program.
The Bulgarian minority co-production Western by Valeska Grisebach (Germany, Bulgaria, United Kingdom) will participate in the Open Horizons program and will be screened as one of the three finalists for the 2017 LUX Film Prize. The LUX winner will be announced in Strasbourg on the 14th of November.
The Bulgarian project Protected Species directed by Hristo Simeonov and produced by Contrast Films – Katya Trichkova has been selected for the Crossroads Co-production Forum in the frames of the industrial platform of the festival AGORA. The project has been supported for development by the Bulgarian National Film Center. Crossroads chooses projects based on the quality of the script, the creative team and the likelihood of their being produced and aims to support the producers of feature-length film projects that are linked to Central Europe, the Mediterranean or Balkan countries.
The Bulgarian entry in the Agora Works in Progress section is the project Sister directed by Svetla Tsotsorkova, produced by Svetoslav Ovcharov – Omega Films and Svetla Tsotsorkova. Bulgaria participates also with the co-production Zizotek by Vardis Marinakis (Greece, Bulgaria) with Bulgarian co-producer Red Carpet Films. Works in Progress section gives the opportunity to selected sales agents, distributors and festival programmers from all over the world to be the first to discover feature films from the Mediterranean and Balkan countries in the stage just before completion.
More information is available at the official TIFF’s site: here.
