SOFIA: Award-winning Bulgarian director Peter Popzlatev is completing postproduction on his new feature film Time Is Ours. Inspired by Vladimir Zarev’s novel Devastation, it is another of the director’s personal looks at Bulgaria’s post-totalitarian reality. His typical highly stylised cinematography is underlining a tense criminal intrigue.

SOFIA: The Bulgarian National Film Center (NFC) distributed 1,801,900 EUR / 3,530,000 BGN at its first session in 2018. Nine feature films, including two with higher budgets and two with lower budgets, two debut features and three short films received production funding. Eight projects received development funding.

SOFIA: HBO has signed a deal for the forthcoming broadcast of nineteen Bulgarian films produced after 1989. Sixteen of them are feature films, while three are documentaries. The deal is part of the HBO’s newly expanded distribution policy in the HBO Adria region, which gives subscribers from Bulgaria, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia and Bosnia & Herzegovina access to the catalogue of the TV channel.

SOFIA: The Bulgarian National Film Center has initiated and signed the first agreement on cooperation on joint activities with the Sofia based Nu Boyana film studios to support the development and stimulate the production, distribution, display and promotion of Bulgarian films.

SOFIA: Agnès Varda’s and JR’s Faces, Places, coproduced by France’s CineTamaris, JRSA and Rouge International, grabbed the Best Documentary Film Award of the Master of Art International Documentary Film Festival. Due to its growing popularity and critical acclaim, the only IFF for Art documentaries in the Balkan region was included as a major event of the Bulgarian Presidency of the Council of the European Union cultural programme. MofA’s third edition is taking place in two stages: from 12 to 22 April and from 23 to 30 April 2018 in Sofia, Plovdiv and Varna.

SOFIA: Ilian Metev’s debut feature 3/4 won the Grand Prix in the international competition of the 22nd Sofia International Film Festival held from 7 to18 March 2018.This Bulgarian/German coproduction also won the Best Bulgarian Film Award.

SOFIA: Bulgaria’s Parliament adopted the amended Film Industry Act, proposed by the Council of Ministers in November 2017. The changes meet the country’s commitments to bring the existing film state aid schemes in line with the European Commission's Communication on State Aid for Films and Other Audiovisual Works (2013/C 332/01).

SOFIA: Twelve debut and sophomore films were selected for the international competition of the 22nd Sofia International Film Fest. The festival will run in Sofia from 7 to 18 March 2018 and additionally in some of the biggest Bulgarian cities from 19 to 29 March 2018.

SOFIA: The year 2017 started with the appointment of a caretaker government by the Bulgarian president, General Rumen Radev, designated to act in a limited time. Centre-right GERB party won the parliamentary elections and in May 2017 Boyko Borisov became Prime Minister for the third time since 2009.

SOFIA: Admissions to domestic films almost tripled in Bulgaria from 176,395 in 2016 to 512,521 in 2017, while the domestic films cashed in over 2 m EUR in 2017 compared to 612,000 EUR in 2016. This is due mostly to the success of Victor Bojinov’s Heights.