site.bta23rd World Week of Italian Language Features Musical Events, Film Screenings, Discussions

From October 15 to 23, the Italian Cultural Institute (ICI) in Sofia is celebrating the 23rd edition of the Week of the Italian Language in the World. The programme includes a series of musical events, film screenings, discussions and classical music.

This year, the theme of the event is “Italian Language and Sustainability", and the aim is to promote to the world, through the Italian language, the culture of sustainability and the image of Italy as a country that takes a leading position on environmental issues and is in line with the themes of Expo2030.

In conjunction with the opening of the Week, the exhibition "Calvino Here and Elsewhere" opened on September 19. It traces the stages of Calvino's incredible international success: in nine panels, it offers a visual walk through the covers of Calvino's most famous books, recreating the journey of his works around the world. The exhibition can be freely viewed in the Embassy's outdoor spaces along the pedestrian Parizh Street until 10 December.

The Italian Language Week 2023 celebrations will be officially launched on Sunday, October 15, with an evening to commemorate the centenary of the birth of Italo Calvino, a visionary environmentalist author. The programme includes a staged reading of excerpts from “If on a Winter's Night a Traveller” and a meeting with translator Sava Slavchev. The opening will be attended by Italian Ambassador Giuseppina Zarra and ICI director Maria Mazza.

The series of events will continue on October 16 with three meetings. Representatives of the international relations office of the University of Padova and students from the Italian-Bulgarian bilingual high school will discuss the international network of Italian universities. In the evening, a gala will take place at Sofia’s Toplocentrala cultural venue, during which the ICI, in collaboration with the "CineLibri 2023" Film and Literature Festival, will present a documentary dedicated to Umberto Eco.  It will be followed by a meeting dedicated to the work of the great writer.

The same evening, at 7.30 pm, the New Symphony Orchestra, in collaboration with the Embassy of Italy in Sofia and the Italian Cultural Institute, will open its 23rd season under the patronage of Ambassador Zarra. The soloists in the programme are two Italian pianists, Marco Schiavo and Sergio Marchegiani, a duo that is highly appreciated by audiences and critics.

On October 18 at the Sofia City Art Gallery, Italian language will be celebrated through the performance of the Italian-Bulgarian duo Massimo Mercelli - Ludmil Angelov, on flute and piano, with the collaboration of the Piano Extravaganza Festival and the Municipality of Sofia.

In addition, ICI, the Italian Embassy in Sofia and CineLibri 2023 will present four film screenings of Italian productions as part of the Italian Language Week: Diabolik - Ginko Attacks!, Dante, Me Captain, and Strangeness.

The Italian Language Week is an annual international event organized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation with the diplomatic network abroad. In Bulgaria, the programme is implemented by the ICI in collaboration with the Embassy of Italy in Bulgaria.