site.btaSozopol to Host 40th Edition of Apollonia Art Festival

The resort town of Sozopol will be hosting the 40th edition of the Apollonia Art Festival between August 28 and September 9, 2024, said Festival Director Margarita Dimitrova at a press conference in the BTA National Press Club in Sofia on Thursday. 

Dimitrova noted that this year the programme is a little more special, "because the aspiration is to show the best of Bulgarian musicians, writers, artists and filmmakers at on stage”. The Orchestra of the Bulgarian National Radio, conducted by Konstantin Ilievski, will mark the opening of the festival, while an orchestra that was created especially for Apollonia will also participate. It will be a chamber string orchestra of 13 musicians who will come together and give a concert for the first time. 

The musical programme will begin with the celebration of the 125th anniversary of the birth of Pancho Vladigerov. The film programme of Apollonia for 2024 will include Lessons of Goodness directed by Stefan Komandarev and Dyada by Yana Titova, as well as Because I love Bad Weather by Yana Lekarska and Plague directed by Ivan Vladimirov. There will be nine film evenings with 7 feature films, one documentary and for the first time an episode of a new, soon-to-be-broadcast TV series called Everything for my son, directed by Pavel Vesnakov", said film critic and producer Prof Bozhidar Manov.

Svetlozar Zhelev, activist in the field of modern literature and book publishing, commented that the literary programme of the festival will, as always, be extremely strong. In his words, this edition of the literary part of the festival will be a kind of bridge between "the living classics of Bulgarian literature and the great doyens, who in the last 40-50 years have held the torch of literature in Bulgaria high, to the youngest writers". 

"The first theatrical event will be a tribute to the director Borislav Chakrinov, former director of the Burgas Drama Theatre," added Dimitrova. She shared that the two have been working together for more than 30 years, with Chakrinov providing great help in organizing and implementing the festival over the years. "There will also many performances from the regional theatres, which is good, because the audience in Sozopol will be able to see some amazingly good examples of the productions that are all over Bulgaria", she noted. 

Prof Georgi Lozanov, Director of the Directorate for Knowledge and Culture at BTA, recalled that the festival has had two phases, one before 1989 and one after. "In both stages the festival adds to the culture what it most lacks. Before 1989 the festival added freedom, after 1989 the festival added taste", he said, adding that freedom and taste do not contradict each other, but turn out to be the same thing - in an important and deep look at culture", said Prof. Georgi Lozanov - Director of the Directorate for knowledge and culture LIK of BTA. 

Kiril Valchev, General Director of BTA, said that since the first edition of the festival in 1984, Apollonia has been permanently present in the information flow of BTA. "Furthermore, BTA helps Apollonia in the organization and presentation of the festival", he added, noting that in 2022, the August issue of the LIK magazine was dedicated specifically to the Apollonia Arts Festival. Valchev said that for three years BTA has been filming and presenting in detail in its broadcasts in Bulgarian and in English all events from the Apollonia programme. "Thus, we achieve that the Apollonia Holidays remain in the history of the agency's archives", he added. Dimitrova called BTA "our most faithful partner during all these 40 years".