FFC Program Director Bernd Buder attended this year’s Sofia Film Festival to scout new films and projects and to serve as a jury member in the Bulgarian competition.
The Sofia Film Festival took place for the 30th time in mid-March. Bulgaria’s largest film festival combines an international competition with competitions for the best film from the Balkan region and the best Bulgarian film.
Ondřej Provazník’s BROKEN VOICES (Czech Republic, Slovakia), which screened in the youth film competition at FilmFestival Cottbus (FFC) last year, won the award for Best Film in the international competition.
At the same time, the 23rd edition of the “Sofia Meetings” was held, where new film projects in development and works in progress were presented. FFC Program Director Bernd Buder reports: “In recent years, I have always discovered some remarkable films here that later went on to be shown in the FFC programme, such as the Czech-Slovak OUR LOVELY PIG SLAUGHTER (2024) or the Serbian-Croatian-Bulgarian HOW COME IT’S ALL GREEN OUT HERE? (2025). This year, too, there were once again several promising projects.”
Traditionally, the Sofia Meetings opened with a networking dinner hosted by German Films, Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, Connecting Cottbus, and FilmFestival Cottbus.
“Sofia was once again an inspiring trip, especially since I had the opportunity to serve on the jury for the Bulgarian competition together with Mihai Chirilov, Artistic Director of the Transilvania International Film Festival, and Dimitris Kerkinos, programmer of the ‘Balkan Survey’ section at the Thessaloniki Film Festival and the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival,” Bernd Buder says.
The award went to Alexander Kossev’s WOMEN OUT OF ORDER, a reflection on four very different women navigating everyday life and change, crisis, hope, and the pitfalls of ordinary dysfunctional communication, which often shapes our self-perception so subtly that we hardly even notice it.