site.bta"The Last Seagull", "Trace" - Big Winners of Golden Rhyton Festival

Tonislav Hristov’s documentary The Last Seagull and Asparuh Petrov’s animated film Trace are the big winners of Golden Rhyton Festival 2023. The awards from the festival for documentary and animation cinema were handed out on the evening of December 21 in Plovdiv, the National Film Centre (NFC) said.

The jury was headed by Theodora Dimova - writer, and members Genoveva Dimitrova - film critic, Petya Nakova - director, Svilen Dimitrov - animator, and Yohannes Artinyan - visual artist and web designer.

The two big prizes are unanimously awarded to The Last Seagull - for its original reflection of contemporary life through the peripeteias of a sympathetic marginal, and to Trace - for its professionalism and exciting minimalism.

The special prizes went to Dimitar Kotzev-Shosho's Man Under Surveillance - for the ease with which a traumatic theme for Bulgarian history is developed, and for Anri Koulev's feature-length animation To Put It Mildly - for the wonderful adaptation of Valeri Petrov's childhood world.

The Municipality of Plovdiv awarded Morality Is Goodness by Veselin Dimanov - for the deep ethical messages the film sends to the next generations, and the animated film Florentine Night by Sotir Gelev - for the beautiful original atmosphere and vision.

The award for screenplay goes to Atanas Kiriakov's 1200 Pages of Pain for the vividly told story of a colourful personality who opposed the communist regime, for cinematography - to Veselin Hristov for the picturesque and all-seeing camera in Svetoslav Ovcharov and Svetla Tsotsorkova's Hero of Our Time, and for directing - to My Uncle Lyuben for the vital and witty work of Nikola Boshnakov and Georgi Stoev-Jackie.

The award for the artist-director in animated cinema goes to Dimitar Dimitrov for the visual richness in The Artist, War and The Artist's Daughter. For debut film, the awards go to Nikolay Stefanov's No Place for You in Our Town for its vivid and temperamental depiction of a powerful aspect of our contemporary reality, and to Spartak Yordanov for Depersonalisation for its skillful embodiments of spirit and compelling rhythm.

Honourable mentions go to Antoaneta Bachurova and Vladimir Lyutskanov's Uprooted - for their discovery of a family repressed by the totalitarian regime and completely forgotten until now, Maria Nikolova's Three Birds - for its evocative and organic blending of different techniques, Kostadin Bonev's The Tin Soldier - for its vital and dense depiction of 1980s rock reality, and Maria Stanisheva's Finding Home - for its heartfelt telling of the life story of a girl from the social underclass.