Fifteen features (three more than at last year's edition) are about to start vying for the Golden Rose Trophy in competition at the 40th Golden Rose Film Festival. Another five recent features will be shown in the non-competitive Open Horizons sidebar together with eight shorts, while 16 other shorts will be locking horns for the Best Bulgarian Short Film Award. The anniversary edition of the gathering will be taking place from 23-29 September at its usual location, in the seaside town of Varna.

The programme includes minority co-productions as well, such as the opening film, How I Learned to Fly by Serbian director Radiovjoe Andric, backed on the Bulgarian side by production companies Doli Media Studio and Art Fest. The latter is run by Sofia Film Festival founder Stefan Kitanov, who also co-produced Darkling [+lee también:
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Two films among the competition titles are angled at children, and they are both debut features: Bulgarian Ship Sinks in a Stormy Sea by Gergana Zmiicharova and Petrinel Gochev, a well-known duo from the world of theatre, and The Tesla Case by Andrey Hadjivasilev. Three more debuts will duke it out in the main competition: Borimir Ilkov-Bono’s Anna [+lee también:
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ficha de la película], Petya Yossifova’s Giri and Orlin Milchev’s The Art of Falling [+lee también:
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ficha de la película]. The latter two are also coming-of-age stories, just like popular actor Valeri Yordanov’s second directorial effort, Shakespeare Like a Street Dog [+lee también:
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After last year’s main award went to a popular genre film, one could say there is a heightened presence of audience-orientated titles in the competition programme this year. Niki Iliev presents Reunion 2, the second part of his local box-office hit Reunion [+lee también:
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ficha de la película], while after the historical biopic on politician and banker Atanas Burov, The Rest Is Ashes, Georgy Kostov is back with the financial thriller Speculators. Lachezar Avramov will show his black comedy Yellow Oleander, which already had its local theatrical premiere earlier this year, and Todor Matsanov is participating with the lockdown film Block, described by the team as a “dark romantic dramedy”. The rest of the competition films are Viktor Bojinov’s second feature, Escape, following his successful Heights/The Liberators [+lee también:
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ficha de la película], which is this year’s Bulgarian Oscar hopeful; and veteran helmer Ivan Pavlov’s Spring Equinox, based on a script by renowned late filmmaker Krasimir Krumov-Grec.

The jury is chaired by Bulgarian film historian, producer and distributor Alexander Donev, and also features Croatian film scholar Ana Grgić, Bulgarian scriptwriter and art researcher Ilko Ganev, as well as filmmakers Blerta Basholi (Kosovo) and Maya Vitkova-Kosev (Bulgaria).

Besides the extensive press conferences, which will often turn into in-depth discussions, two other talks are planned: one on women in Bulgarian cinema and a conversation about film in the digital age, where representatives of streaming platforms in Bulgaria will be in attendance.