VARNA: Kristina Grozeva’s and Petar Valchanov’s The Father won the Golden Rose award of the 37th Golden Rose National Film Festival (28 September - 4 October 2018). The film also received the Danny Lerner Award offered by Nu Boyana, including services equal to the amount of 50,000 EUR along with 5,000 EUR in cash for the development of the director’s next feature project. Grozeva, Valchanov and their co-scriptwriter Decho Taralezhkov also received the best script award, and Ivan Barnev and Ivan Savov received best actor awards for the same film. The Father won the Grand Prix at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival earlier this year.

VARNA: A total of 13 feature and 17 short films will screen in the official competition of the 37th Golden Rose National Film Festival, running in Varna from 27 September to 4 October 2019. Five of the feature films in competition are first films.

SOFIA: Stefan Komandarev has finished his fifth feature film Rounds, a Bulgarian/Serbian coproduction supported by Eurimages. It is a sequel to the director’s previous Bulgarian/German/Macedonian film Directions (Argo Film, Aktis Film Production, Sector), selected for Un Certain Regard in 2017.

SOFIA: The Bulgarian National Film Center decided to allot 2,393,250 EUR / 4,786,500 BGN at its first session in 2019. Nine films, including two with high budgets, three with low budgets, one debut and three shorts, will receive production funding. Nine projects will also get development support.

SOFIA: European Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society Mariya Gabriel and world-famous director Wim Wenders, Ambassador of the SaferInternet4EU campaign, participated in a public debate on the improvement of the Digital Single Market regulations on 5 April, 2019 in Sofia. Part of the wider promotional EU campaign, the all-day event was hosted by the Commission's representation in Bulgaria, which involved in it young internet users, film professionals and local media.

SOFIA: Mostly known for his documentaries, the Bulgarian director Svetoslav Draganov started shooting his debut feature Waterfall CEO on 23 March 2019. The film is a Bulgarian/Romanian coproduction supported by the Bulgarian National Film Center and the Romanian Film Centre.

SOFIA: Marius Olteanu’s debut feature Monsters. won the Grand Prix in the international competition of the 23rd Sofia International Film Festival, held from 7 to 17 March 2019.

SOFIA: The 16th edition of the Sofia Meetings coproduction market, set to take place from 13 to 17 March 2019 within the 23rd Sofia International Film Fest will host 34 projects of first, second and third films. The Works in Progress section will screen 23 titles still in postproduction.

SOFIA: The Bulgarian National Film Center will increase the annual amount of film funding by 12.19 percent from 6,411,600 EUR in 2018 to 7,192,854 EUR in 2019. The support for minority coproductions will raise by nearly 50 percent from 613,550 EUR in 2018 to 919,814 EUR in 2019.

The year 2018 turned out to be extremely complex for the Bulgarian film industrу. Public support for film was blocked and the Bulgarian National Film Center was forbidden to allot financing. The restrictive measure was applied because the country had failed to adjust its film and audiovisual legislation to the European requirements within the official deadline of 12 December 2017.