SOFIA: The 18th edition of the Sofia Meetings coproduction market, set to take place from 17 to 24 March 2021 within the 25th Anniversary Sofia International Film Festival, will be held online, due to the COVID 19 pandemic. In less than a year, the organisers of the event are forced to do so for the second time, as its previous edition took place in July 2020 instead of March 2020.
SOFIA: France’s mk2 Films has picked up Mina Mileva’s and Vesela Kazakova’s second feature film Women Do Cry, a Bulgarian/French coproduction from Sofia based Activist 38 and Ici et La Productions. The plot of the film refers to gender-based violence in the female directing duo’s native country Bulgaria.
SOFIA: Twelve debut and sophomore films are included in the international competition of the 25th Anniversary Sofia International Film Fest. Four of them come from CEE countries, three from Westerns Europe, and one each from Turkey, China, Mongolia, Brazil, and Iran.
SOFIA: Bulgaria’s cash rebate for film production passed its second Parliamentary vote on 17 February 2021. The vote took place nearly a month later than originally scheduled, following a series of intense public debates between MPs from the Parliamentary Committee on Culture and the Media, the Union of Bulgarian Filmmakers, numerous film associations, film directors and experts. The new legislation will also provide substantial increases in support for Bulgarian film production.
SOFIA: Stefan Kitanov, the director of the Sofia International Film Fest, announced that the 25th anniversary edition will still take place in the context of the ongoing pandemic, but will be split into two parts.
SOFIA: Critical for culture and film worldwide, the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 was equally difficult for the film industry in Bulgaria.
SOFIA: Bulgarian admissions decreased by 72%, while the box office fell by 73% in 2020, due to the Covid-19 restrictions. Total admissions were 1,337,951 and total box office was 6,485,835 EUR, compared to total admissions of 4,801,045 and total box office of 23,895,950 EUR in 2019. US films had 5, 074,515 EUR gross, European titles had 651,014 EUR gross, and domestic films had 596,640 EUR gross.
SOFIA: UK based Reel 2 Reel Films will launch the release of the sarcastic thriller Danny. Legend. God. by Bulgarian-born director Yavor Petkov, currently living and working in London.
SOFIA: Bulgaria’s cash rebate for film production has passed its first hurdle. The cash rebate of up to 25%, which is included in amendments to the country’s 2003 Film Industry Act, passed its first of two parliamentary votes on 4 December.
SOFIA: The Bulgarian National Film Center gave 1,987,397 EUR / 3,877,000 BGN to nine films in production and nine films in development at its second session of grants for Bulgarian feature films in December 2020. The production grants go to two films with high budgets, three with lower budgets, one debut and three shorts.