site.bta5th Sofia DocuMental International Film Festival: Step Out of the Bubble!

The 5th Sofia DocuMental International Film Festival (September 28 - October 6, 2024) - this country's  first and only documentary film festival with a focus on human rights - will present 30 documentaries that have won prestigious international awards and are premieres for Bulgaria. In a world where indifference and division rule, the Festival invites us to step beyond our comfort one and expand our perception of reality, as its motto implies.

Some of the filmmakers will be available on site for exclusive Q&A sessions with the Bulgarian audience.

The entries are grouped into eight thematic sections: Special Focus, Sphere of Influence, Democracy under Fire, Archival Heritage, Metamorphoses, Human/Nature, Art as Resistance, and The Future Is Now.

The best woman director will be selected from among ten entrants in a special competition programme, which has been a trademark of the event since 2020. "This programme will strengthen Sofia’s status as a global centre for documentary cinema, where the voices of female artists will be heard and supported, epitomizing one of the Festival's key missions to highlight the need of diversity and equality in the film industry," says Sofia DocuMental Festival Director Martichka Bozhilova.

The opening event of this year’s edition will take place on September 30 with Elina Psykou's Stray Bodies. The Greek-Swiss-Italian-Bulgarian co-production follows the intertwined paths of three women defying their countries’ restrictive laws on bodily autonomy.

Other highlights on the bill:

- KIX (Hungary), directed by Bálint Révész and Dávid Mikulán, traces the odyssey of a boy’s coming of age.

- Apolena Rychlíková's Limits of Europe (Czechia, Slovakia, France) follows a Czech journalist on a two-year undercover assignment to expose the harsh realities of underpaid migrant labour in Western Europe.

- Oksana Karpovych’s Intercepted (Canada, France, Ukraine) collates phone calls between Russian soldiers and their families, intercepted by Ukrainian intelligence, contrasted with scenes of daily life disrupted by Russia’s aggression.

- Madeleine Gaveine's Beyond Utopia (US) tells about the perilous journeys of defectors from the repressive regime of North Korea.

- Konrad Szolajski's Putin’s Playground (Poland, Czechia, Bulgaria. Germany, Norway) reveals covert operations of hybrid warfare in five post-Soviet camp countries by Moscow’s special agents active there since at least 2013.

- Vanessa Hope's Invisible Nation (US, Taiwan) provides an urgent and intimate look at Taiwan's geopolitical struggle through the eyes of its first female President, Tsai Ing-wen.

- Farahnaz Sharifi's My Stolen Planet (Germany, Iran) is a poignant exploration of an Iranian filmmaker’s memories of joy and defiance against oppression.

- Kumjana Novakova's Silence of Reason (Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia) is a powerful forensic video essay about sexual violence during the Bosnian War.

- Agent of Happiness (Bhutan/Hungary), directed by Arun Bhattarai and Dorottya Zurbo, follows the bittersweet journey of a 40-year-old who goes round homes in Bhutan to measure people’s happiness level.

- Klara Tasovska's I Am Not Everything I Want to Be (Czechia) is a vivid exploration of art as a sanctuary and catalyst of freedom and self-discovery through the story of a 16-year-old photographer who defies the Soviet-imposed ‘normalization’ in Czechoslovakia after the suppression of the Prague Spring.

On September 29 at Cinema House, renowned visual artist, filmmaker, writer and producer Jihan El-Tahri, known for her powerful stories from the Global South, will present and discuss three of her most important films: Cinema Died at Camp Boiro, CUBA: An African Odyssey, and Nasser: Egypt’s Modern Pharaohs.

On October 2, Kinoclub Super 8 will screen the first part of 9.5 mm amateur films shot in Sofia, Bansko and Hisarya in 1932, starting a presentation of its oldest collection dating from the 1930s and 1940s that it has managed to find, restore and digitize.

On the last night of the Festival, October 5, the audience at Cinema House will be able to enjoy, ahead of the awards ceremony, Borjana Ventzislavova's New News from Another Home (Austria/Bulgaria). The director revisits her own mother-daughter relationships and explores the resulting family stories and traumas.

The screenings will take place at nine key cultural locations in the centre of the capital city: the Largo Sofia pop-up cinema, Cinema House, Odeon Cinema, the Czech Centre, the Institut francais, Goethe-Institut, the Polish Institute, Club DOM, and the recently opened stage of the Central Market Hall.

The embassies of Czechia, France, Greece, the Republic of Korea and Ukraine and their and other countries’ cultural institutes have collaborated in organizing the 2024 edition of Sofia DocuMental.

In a sideline to the main programme, the Festival’s Balkan Documentary Market (BDC) will offer, for a third year in a row, a platform for film industry professionals, enabling participants to share experiences and ideas, meet new international partners, and find collaboration opportunities. The BDC will hold two events: the second module of the one-of-a-kind BDC Discoveries Programme, which is supported by the European Commission’s Creative Europe - MEDIA Programme, and, for the first time this year, a Balkan Watchers pitching forum, designed to encourage investigative documentary films and podcasts in the Balkans in particular and in Central and Eastern Europe at large.