Over 20 new films in the Open Horizons out-of-competition section, along with special screenings aimed at diverse audiences, will be presented during the 42^nd Golden Rose Bulgarian Feature Film Festival (19-26 September), set to unspool in the Black Sea coastal city of Varna. The opening ceremony will take place on Thursday 19 September in the large hall of the Festival and Congress Centre, followed by a screening of this year’s Short Film Palme d'Or winner, The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent by Nebojsa Slijepcevic, co-produced by Bulgaria’s Contrast Films.

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“Most of the works delve into the challenges of the contradictory, contemporary Bulgarian reality – they no longer deal with the communist past and its traces in the modern day, but rather try to explore more universal issues,” the artistic director of the festival, Alexander Donev, tells Cineuropa. “A specific common motif in a large group of films is the presence of characters from highly vulnerable social groups: abandoned or orphaned children, the elderly or the disadvantaged,” he explains.

Four titles in the feature competition are directed or co-directed by women: Nadejda Koseva’s The Trap [+leggi anche:
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scheda film], Magdalena Ralcheva’s Wedlock, Triumph [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Kristina Grozeva e Petar V…
scheda film], co-directed by Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov, and Yana Lekarska’s Because I Love Bad Weather. The latter is also a debut, like five more films in the section: Nikolay Egermann’s Don’t Close Your Eyes, Boiko Boyanov’s Class 90, Andrey Getov’s Bo Nan Za, Vasil Barkov’s End of the River and Martin Genovski’s Bring Me Home.

Three films are minority co-productions, and as such, only the participation of Bulgarian artists will be eligible for awards: Tinatin Kajrishvili’s Citizen Saint [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Tinatin Kajrishvili
scheda film] and Adi Voicu’s The Capture, on both of which Krum Rodriguez served as DoP, and Arcadia [+leggi anche:
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trailer
intervista: Yorgos Zois
scheda film] by Yorgos Zois, featuring music composed by Petar Dundakov. The rest of the titles in the feature competition are works by established filmmakers: Pavel Vesnakov’s Windless [+leggi anche:
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trailer
intervista: Pavel G Vesnakov
scheda film], Dimitar “Shosho” Kotzev’s The Answer to All Questions, Niki Iliev’s Wingless and Stanislav Donchev’s Before I Forget.

Among the other highlights of the festival is a panel discussion entitled "Antifascism in Cinema. Poland and Bulgaria", which will be accompanied by a screening of Binka Zhelyazkova’s The Last Word, premiered at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival. The discussion is part of the official celebration of the 80th birthday of actress Tzvetana Maneva, whose image has inspired the official poster of the festival.