11th Sofia International Film Festival
1-11 March 2007

Ron Holloway, Berlin, 25 March 2007

A month before the launch of the 11th Sofia International Film Festival (1-11 March 2007), the local population celebrated the grand opening of an imposing new airport that underscored its proud status as a new member of the European Community. According to some news reports, the airport will be accommodating in the course of the year an overflow of tourists on their way to reasonably priced hotels dotting the Black Sea coast. Indeed, all the guests attending the 11th SIFF and the equally important 4th Sofia Meetings – read: Balkan Screenings and Second Films Pitching – were all housed in comfortable deluxe hotels. Festival director Stefan Kitanov received augmented support from Minister of Culture Stefan Danailov and Sofia Mayor Boyko Borisov to supplement the input of two dozen private sponsors. In addition, selected SIFF entries were screened over an extended festival week in Burgas, the Black Sea seaport city, and in Plovdiv, the ancient city (Philippopolis) noted for Thracian gold treasures and a restored Greek arena.

 Sofia could boast of three Oscar winners in its program: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s Das Leben der Anderen (The Life of Others) (Germany, Best Foreign Language Film), Davis Guggenheim and Al Gore’s’s An Inconvenient Truth (USA, Best Documentary), and Kevin Macdonald’s The Last King of Scotland (UK, Forest Whitaker, Best actor). An oft-awarded director headed the International Jury: Tajikistan’s Bakhtiar Khudoinazarov (Silver Lion, Venice, for Kosh ba kosh, 1993). Competition entries vied for cash purses and hefty services-in-kind awards. Additional juries were assembled for the Balkan Showcase and the Bulgarian Features sidebars, sections that formed the core of the festival. Serb director Dusan Milic’s Guca (Gucha! Distant Trumpet) (Serbia), a rich musical salute to gypsy bands, opened Sofia 2007. Jiri Menzel’s Obsluhoval jsem anglickeho (I Served the King of England) (Czech Republic), fresh from the Berlinale competition, closed the festival.

 The Sofia audience was treated to over 230 screenings. European cultural organizations pitched in with both national and international programming, to wit: French Cultural Institute Presents, British Council Presents, Focus on Germany, European Screen, World Screen, Galas & Avant-Premieres, Documentary and Short Films, Madrid Film School Program, Prix UIP Winners 2006, Retrospective Salutes to Federico Fellini, Wim Wenders, Hirokazu Koreeda, and Lyudmil Staikov. The icing on the festival cake was back-to-back Lifetime Achievement Awards honoring Jiri Menzel and Wim Wenders, the latter with a full-scale “A Filmmaker on the Road” retrospective. And following the awards ceremony in the National Palace of Culture, Stefan Kitanov led the celebration with the usual pack-house, all-night concert by the “Festival Band”! Drawing upon his expertise as the founder of a rock festival before SIFF days, Kitanov now takes the band on tours to other festivals. Also know as the “Three Stevens” – the core of the band is composed of a trio of festival directors who moonlight as lead guitarists: Stefan Laudyn (Warsaw), Stefan Uhrik (Independents Section, Karlovy Vary), and impresario Stefan Kitanov (Sofia).

 The Grand Prix was awarded to Srdjan Golubovic’s Klopka (The Trap) (Serbia/Germany/Hungary), scripted by the talented Srdjan Koljevic, whose screenplays have helped significantly to maintain a quality standard in Serbian cinema. An absorbing story of a good man who turns bad, Mladen (Nebojsa Glogovac) is an honest unemployed laborer who gradually agrees to a hitman contract in order to earn the money for an operation to save the life of his young son. The misery of social conditions in Belgrade, affected by gang wars and political corruption, allows for an easy link to illegal forces who can exploit the innocent to do their dirty work. The Trap, a coproduction with Germany and Hungary, was also a critical hit at the Berlinale in the International Forum of New Cinema section. A week later, and just days before the Sofia festival screening, it opened the Belgrade FEST program and was enthusiastically received by the home audience.

 The Nisi Masa (Young European Filmmakers) Award went to Ognjen Svilicic’s Armin (Croatia/Germany/Bosnia-Herzegovina), directed by the same Croatian filmmaker who had made the light family comedy Oprosti za Kung Fu (Sorry for Kung Fu) (2004). This time, he delighted the Sofia audience with a tongue-in-cheek tale cut from the lives of little people in the Balkans. When 14-year-old Armin hears that there’s a chance to be in the movie, he persuades his father to accompany him to Zagreb for an audition in a German film about the Bosnian war. But the trip from their small town in Bosnia-Herzegovina is plagued by bad luck – the bus breaks down, and they arrive too late for the audition. Even after the father manages to set up a second audition, the tables are turned upside down again. The production company is more interested in the father than the son.

 The Special Jury Prize was awarded to Kirill Mikhanovsky’s Sonhos se peixe (Fish Dreams) (Brazil/Russia/USA). Based just on the success of his first feature film, Mikhanovsky is a director to keep an eye on. Born in Moscow, he emigrated as a teenager with his family to the United States, where he studied cinema at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. One of his short films, Inhale, Exhale (2003), won an Audience Award at a Directors Guild of American showcase at New York University. For Fish Dreams he chose a location on the northeastern coast of Brazil and worked with nonprofessionals to tell a tale of unrequited love. The 17-year-old Jusce makes a meager living diving for lobsters at dangerous depths and hopes one day to own a boat of his own. His girlfriend, Ana, saddled with a young daughter and fed by evening soap operas, longs to leave the village for the big city. So when a lothario happens upon the scene to compete for Ana’s favors, Jusce may have to sacrifice his dreams after all.

 The Best Director Award went to Chris Kraus for Vier Minuten (Four Minutes) (Germany). Since Four Minutes had previously won the Grand Prix at Shanghai, coupled with an armful of Bavarian Film Awards, it was not surprising that the International Critics Jury also awarded its FIPRESCI Prize to the film. The story of two scarred women – one a prison warden and piano teacher, the other a proficient but disturbed young pianist – the story begins to take shape when the possibility of a national youth music competition surfaces to test the girl’s natural-born talent, an offer that upsets both the prison officials and her fellow inmates. In the end, in order to master the situation and enter the contest, both women are obliged to bare their souls to each other. What surfaces is the hangover from an incestuous rape by the girl’s father and a hidden lesbian relationship during the war that cost the life of the piano teacher's innocent companion.

 Although the official Bulgarian entry in the main competition, Iglika Trifonova’s Razledvane (Investigation), a coproduction with Germany and the Netherlands, was overlooked by the International Jury, it was awarded Best Balkan Film and Best Bulgarian Film by separate juries. A Cain-and-Abel crime drama in which a woman investigator must determine who is more guilty than others in a murder of a man by his own brother, Investigation is clearly the outstanding Bulgarian feature of the season. Tightly directed, with strong acting performances by Svetlana Yancheva as the state prosecutor and Kassimir Dokov as the accused man whose silence hinders the closing of the case, the film is based on a true case and maintains a ring of moral authenticity from start to finish.

 A Bulgarian documentary was a standout at the festival: Teddy Moskov’s Zhenata ot Dnoto na salona (The Lady at the Back of the Hall). As the title hints, this is the moving story of a sympathetic voice interpreter for Italian films that were screened in Bulgaria for both Party politicians and the general public during and after communist times. Nelly Chervenusheva not only knows all the films of the great Italian directors inside out, but her refined sense for Italian colloquial expressions often enhanced screenings far more that subtitles could provide. To his credit, documentary filmmaker Teddy Moskov arranges a trip to Italy on her behalf, where she is filmed in conversation with two of her favorite directors: Ettore Scola and Mario Monicelli. Her thorough knowledge of scenes and motifs in the directors’ masterpieces elevates their conversation to moving moments of aesthetic appreciation and insightful commentary. Later, when she requests to visit the Trevi Fountain in Rome, where Fellini had filmed the famous water scene with Marcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg for a climatic moment in La Dolce Vita (Italy, 1959), she is disturbed to the bone that so many young people now come here to eat their lunch and engage in frivolous conversation. For her, the place is nothing less than a shrine to Italian cinema, a holy sanctuary to soothe the soul of the cineaste. My guess is that The Lady at the Back of the Hall would make a delightful double-bill with La Dolce Vita in selected esoteric art houses.

Awards

Stella Artois Grand Prix, Best Film
Klopka (The Trap) (Serbia/Germany/Hungary), dir Srdjan Golubovic
Special Jury Award
Sonhos se peixe (Fish Dreams) (Brazil/Russia/USA), dir Kirill Mikhanovsky
First Investment Bank Award, Best Director
Chris Kraus, Vier Minuten (Four Minutes) (Germany)
No Man’s Land Award, Best Balkan Film
Razsledvane (Investigation) (Bulgaria/Netherlands/Germany), dir Iglika Trifonova
Kodak Award, Best Bulgarian Film
Razsledvane (Investigation) (Bulgaria/Netherlands/Germany), dir Iglika Trifonova
Jameson Award, Best Short Film
Minutite sled toba (The Minutes After) (Bulgaria), dir Nikolai Todorov
International Critics (FIPRESCI) Award
Vier Minuten (Four Minutes) (Germany), dir Chris Kraus
Nisi Masa Award
Armin (Croatia/Germany/ Bosnia&Hercegovina), dir Ognjen Svilicic
Audience Award
Guca (Gucha! Distant Trumpet) (Serbia/Germany/Austria/Bulgaria), dir Dusan Milic
Lifetime Achievement Awards
Wim Wenders, Germany
Jiri Menzel, Czech Republic