'Mermaid' wins Sofia festival

East European films shine

By WILL TIZARD

SOFIA, Bulgaria — Eastern European film shone at the Sofia fest, which wrapped Saturday with its grand prize going to Russia’s “The Mermaid,” a moody fantasy parable by Anna Melikyan.

Fest jury, citing outstanding lensing, perfs, “energy and invention” in Melikyan’s work, also awarded a special mention to Dutch-South African-U.K. pic “The Bird Can’t Fly,” a family drama helmed by Threes Anna.

Stefen Arsenijevic scored best helmer kudo for the Serbian-German-Austrian-Slovenian Mafia romancer “Love and Other Crimes,” a pic which, like many at the Sofia fest, explored the thriving underworld and sense of hopelessness of so many on the eastern edges of the New Europe.

Sofia itself, full of crumbling apartment blocks and dilapidated communist-era monuments, seems to embody the spirit of such films as it struggles to catch up to the economy of the rest of the European Union.

At the same time, changes are clearly afoot: Fest is backed by Cadillac and Jameson, designer stores are springing up along Sofia’s main boulevards and the Sofia Meetings event, at which 22 up-and-coming filmmakers presented project proposals, was abuzz.

Event’s focus on helmers who have already completed one feature seemed to appeal to scouts from Western Europe and beyond.

The 11 features and seven shorts in fest’s Balkan sidebar also suggest that regional filmmaking, along with increasing numbers of international co-productions, is coming into its own.

Seven such pics have shot in Bulgaria in the past year, while five wholly local ones have wrapped in that time.

Bulgaria-set bicycle road movie “The World Is Big and Salvation Lurks Around the Corner,” as if to underscore the point, picked up best Bulgarian feature kudo. Pic is the result of Bulgarian, German, Slovenian and Hungarian partnership, and was directed by Sofia’s own Stefan Komandarev — his second feature.

Best Balkan film went to “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days,” Romanian Kristian Mungiu’s Cannes-winner of 2007, while best Bulgarian short went to darkly comic “Family Therapy” by Petar Valchanov.

A tale of gritty urban reality in Sofia, “Seamstresses” by Ludmil Todorov, picked up the FIPRESCI prize. Pic’s story of broken dreams in the Bulgarian capital is ironic considering the definite sense of rebirth in filmmaking here.