site.btaThree Balkan Films Selected for 29th Sofia Film Fest

Three films from Balkan countries will be featured in the programme of the 29th Sofia Film Fest (SFF), which will be held from March 13 to 31, the organizers said.

Competing in the SFF Balkan section are Mother Mara by Serbian director Mirjana Karanovic, Giannis in the Cities by Greek filmmaker Eleni Alexandrakis, and Waterdrop by Albanian director Robert Budina.

Mother Mara, Karanovic’s latest film, premiered at the 2024 Sarajevo Film Festival and was met with a standing ovation, according to the SFF. Karanovic, renowned for her roles in Emir Kusturica’s When Father Was Away on Business and Underground, stars in and co-wrote the film alongside Maja Pelevic and Ognjen Svilicic. The story follows a successful businesswoman whose life is disrupted by the sudden death of her 20-year-old son.

Eleni Alexandrakis’s Giannis in the Cities is set at the end of the Greek Civil War. The story follows Giannis, the son of a rebel, who is uprooted and placed in special child care facilities where his beliefs and desires are manipulated. As an adult, Giannis comes to realize that throughout his childhood he has been manipulated into hating his father. He sets out to find his father, who had sought refuge in the Black Sea city of Varna as part of the wave of Greek refugees during the socialist era, the SFF team said. Giannis in the Cities was included in the programme of the 65th Thessaloniki Film Festival in November 2024.

Waterdrop, Albanian director Robert Budina’s third film, is set in an Albanian town on Lake Ohrid. The story revolves around a city hall manager who fights to defend her teenage son after he is accused of sexually assaulting a classmate. The film had its world premiere at the 2024 Warsaw International Film Festival.

Budina and his wife, Sabina Kodra, founded Erafilm Production in 2001, a company that has spent over two decades producing and promoting independent Albanian films and co-productions, some of which have been presented at the Sofia Film Fest.