VARNA: Georgi Kostov’s debut film Pistol, Briefcase and Three Stinking Barrels, competing in the Bulgarian national competition at the Golden Rose FF 2012, is a low budget film financed by private sources and bank loans.

VARNA: State of Shock, a coproduction between Slovenia, Bulgaria, Serbia, Macedonia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina by Slovenian director Andrej Kosak, opens the 31st "Golden Rose" Bulgarian film festival, 5-11 October 2012.

After almost two years of a funding crisis, the second half of 2011 marked the restoration of the government's financial support for Bulgarian film.

The Association of Bulgarian Advertising Agencies (http://www.arabulgaria.org/) reports that the Bulgarian media market fell 20% during the first quarter of 2009.

The beloved Bulgarian actor, storyteller, artist, animator and writer Kliment Denchev died on March 29 at age 69 in Montreal.

Writer/actor/director Ivailo Hristov is mid-way through a six-week spring shooting schedule (along with one week in autumn) on his newest immigration story A Place With No Windows.

Having started principal photography of his World War II film "The Way Back" on February 23, six-time Academy Award nominee Peter Weir intends to work in Sofia for another month.

Viktor Chouchkov Jr.'s ambitious and youthful Tilt, based on a script by Dimitar Kotzev-Shosho and producer Borislav Chouchkov, begins filming on March 13.

Out of 12 feature film projects supported by the National Film Center last year, nine belong to first time directors, with only three films headed by veteran directors.

Three Bulgarian productions and co-productions are on their way to international distribution, following the EFM in Berlin.