site.btaFestival of Bulgarian Cinema in Paris in 2024: Focus on Co-Productions, New Bulgarian Cinema and Attempt for More Than Screenings

Le Festival du Cinéma Bulgare à Paris will take place between the 10th and 13th of September at Le Grand Action movie theater in the French capital. In an exclusive BTA interview, the event's organizer and lead programmer, Rumena Ivanova, talked about the concept of this year's sixth edition of the festival, the selection of films and the attempt to hold a meeting between French and Bulgarian industry professionals in the form of a workshop and pitching session. 

The first and only festival for Bulgarian cinema in France was created in 2017 in the form of a civic initiative based entirely on volunteer work and orchestrated by the Cinema Collective association.

Each edition has a topic. This year the event will be held under the theme Stronger Together, with a focus on co-productions. "We believe that any cinema, including Bulgarian cinema, will be stronger if it works in collaboration with foreign partners," Ivanova explained. 

The festival will open with The Shameless by director Konstantin Bojanov (Switzerland, Bulgaria, France, Taiwan, India), which was selected at Cannes 2024 in the Un Certain Regard category and took the award for Best Actress.

A discussion with the French producer of the film will take place after the screening.

The theme was chosen for one more reason: the festival will put short films under the spotlight in attempt to support new Bulgarian cinema and its authors. "This year, unlike the fifth edition, we have a jury and audience award in the short film category only."

The Selection

Le Festival du Cinéma Bulgare à Paris will include screenings of three feature films - in addition to The Shameless, these will be January by director Andrei Paunov (Luxembourg, Bulgaria and Portugal) and Le Fruit Défendu by Venci Kostov (Bulgaria, Spain), who will be a guest of the event and will present his film in person. 

The sixth edition of the festival will be held under the patronage of director and screenwriter Kamen Kalev, whose graduation film from his student years at the French academy La Fémis will be screened on September 11. The programme of the second day of the festival will end with a meeting with Kalev and a short discussion with the audience.

The competition selection of short films has been prepared by a three-member team including Ivanova, Joshua Jádi, who is the programmer of the FilmFestival Cottbus, an international film festival for Eastern European cinema, and Rosalie Gleyze, a junior producer in Paris with extensive experience on the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival team. Rumena Ivanova holds a degree in Film Studies and Social and Cultural Anthropology from Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. She has experience in film production as well as in organizing cultural events and film events.

Chocolat by Orlin Milchev, Mona Lisa by Veselka Kuncheva, Theatrical Romance by Teodora-Kosara Popova, And That's For This Christmas by Petar Vulchev, Shell in Love by Svilen Dimitrov and Everything Tastes Strange Today by Kristina Spassovska will compete for the jury and audience awards.

Available for Viewing in Bulgaria for the First Time

Until September 12, Bulgarian viewers will be able to watch the six films online thanks to the festival's partnership with the video platform Gledam.bg and support their favourite, with their votes counting on September 12. "The fee one has to pay to access the films goes to the festival and its organizational needs," Ivanova said. 

"Another partnership that allows us to reach Bulgarian audiences is the one with the French Institute in Bulgaria, which between September 13th and 28th will broadcast films that have participated in the festival over the years," she added.

The Festival's Added Value - More Than Just Screenings 

For the fifth edition in 2021, the team behind the festival decided to do more than just screenings and organize a meeting between people from the industry. 

"We did a round table at the Bulgarian Cultural Institute in Paris, where we discussed topics related to cinema in Bulgaria and France. Our Bulgarian-French jury took part in that conversation," Ivanova recalled. 

This year's edition aimed to go one step further with an accompanying event in the form of a pitching session, which producers from both countries have agreed to attend, as well as French distributors and representatives of major local TV stations. The Bulgarian Embassy in Paris joined as partner and host for this initiative.

Funding Problems

The organizers of the event reported that the project was fully developed in terms of programme and logistics, and was planned to be attended by renowned guests from the French side and promising projects from the Bulgarian side. Delays in funding from the National Culture Fund and the inability of the organization to provide in time all necessary funding on their own forced the cancellation of the pitching session two weeks before the festival.

In 2023, the festival was approved for government support through the National Film Centre, but never received the funding and there has been no official answer as to why no contract was signed.

"This is, in my opinion, a huge missed opportunity. This event should have been the start of a distinct market for future co-productions in France."

The festival team will still hold the event at the Embassy as a networking cocktail, but only four directors and no producers will be able to attend from the Bulgarian side.

"I would like to say that festivals like ours happen really by magic and on fumes, which should not be the case, because such initiatives are very important for the development of Bulgarian cinema and its representation abroad. We approached a lot of potential sponsors and, unfortunately, there was no success this year. The festival does not have the necessary funds, we work voluntarily and thanks to the partnerships we make, we still manage to create an event at a high level. The cinema where the festival is held is in the heart of Paris, there are two films from Cannes 2024 in the programme, everything from our side from a technical point of view is at a very high level. But there are things that cannot happen without funding – such as the pitching session," Ivanova explained.

Le Festival du Cinéma Bulgare à Paris is also seeking financial support through a crowdfunding campaign.