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FESTIVALS Bulgaria

16th Sofia fest announces titles in competition

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The 16th Sofia International Film Festival will take place from March 9-18 with a programme of more than 160 features and 60 shorts. Twelve first and second features will vie for the festival's top prize in the international competition, while popular sidebars will screen important auteur films from 2011, and new local and Balkan features.

For the second time in the festival's history, two Bulgarian films have a chance to win the top prize: Konstantin Bojanov's Ave [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Konstantin Bojanov
film profile
]
, already screened in last year's Cannes Critics' Week, and Kristina Nikolova's Faith, Love and Whiskey, a Bulgaria-USA co-production which has already won a cinematography award at this year's Slamdance Film Festival.

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New features from Europe and the two Americas occupy the other ten spots in the competition, with Europe productions having the lion share: Gabriel Achim's Adalbert's Dream [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Gabriel Achim
film profile
]
(Romania), Felix Stienz's Doll, Fatty and Me [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
(Germany), Radek Wegrzyn's Father, Son and the Holly Cow (Poland), Elias Demetriu's Fish 'n' Chips (Cyprus), Owen Harris's Holly Flying Circus (Great Britain), Ozcan Alper's Future Lasts Forever [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
(Turkey), Victor Ginzburg's Generation P (USA-Russia), Julia Murat's Stories That Only Exist When Remembered (Brazil-Argentina-France), Jaffe Zinn's Magic Valley (USA) and Simon Davidson's The Odds (Canada).

One of the festival's most popular sidebars is The Big Five, which screens recent winners at Cannes, Venice, Berlin, Toronto and Sundance. This year's invited country is Romania - the festival will show ten recent Romanian features, with directors Tudor Giurgiu (Love Sick) and Catalin Mitulescu (Loverboy [+see also:
trailer
interview: Ada Condeescu
film profile
]
) and producer Daniel Mitulescu (If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Ada Condeescu
film profile
]
) among this edition's guests.

British director Hugh Hudson is the guest of honour and his Oscar-winning film Chariots of Fire will be screened as a dedication to the 2012 London Olympics. Italian director Ettore Scola is the focus of a retrospective, and the programme Cinema Today - The Masters will show the newest features of renowned contemporary directors such as Alexei Balabanov, Pawel Pawlikowski, Andrea Arnold and Kim Ki-Duk.

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