Bartosz Blaschke’s Sonata has been named best film at Sofia International Film Festival (SIFF, March 10-31), which is staging its first full in-person edition since the start of the pandemic.
The Polish filmmaker’s debut feature picked up the Sofia City of Film Grand Prix as well as the audience award at a ceremony in the Bulgarian capital on Saturday (March 19). The drama is based on the true story of musician Grzegorz Plonka, who was initially diagnosed as autistic before it is discovered he had acute hearing loss.
The feature received its world premiere at Gdynia Polish Film Festival in September, where it also won the audience award as well as best debut actor for Michal Sikorski. International sales are handled by Warsaw-based IKH Pictures Promotion.
SIFF’s awards ceremony was held physically at the National Palace of Culture for the first time since the Covid-19 outbreak, with last year’s festival cut short by a week due to an emergency lockdown being imposed in Bulgaria
It is the war in Ukraine that has provided the backdrop to this year’s festival, adopting the title of the Plastic Ono Band’s song Give Peace A Chance as its motto – and playing a short excerpt of the song after every speech during the ceremony.
SIFF also used the ceremony to highlight the plight of Ukrainian filmmakers. SIFF festival co-director Stefan Kitanov said: “Oleh Sentsov and Valentyn Vasyanovych are on the front line right now and so are many other of our colleagues, producers, distributors, festival organisers. Our thoughts and hearts are with you, dear friends.”
Sentsov had been invited to join the international competition jury before the invasion began last month, which would have seen the Ukrainian director return to festival a decade after he pitched Rhino at the Sofia Meetings in 2012, winning the best project award. Sentsov had previously been made an honorary SIFF jury member in 2016, when he was being held in a Russian prison, following his arrest in August 2015.
‘Murina’ adds to prize haul
The ceremony also saw Svetoslav Draganov’s Bulgaria-Romania co-production Humble win the special jury award while Bulgaria’s Andrey M. Paounov won best director for his fiction feature debut January. Iran’s Arvand Dashtaray was given a special mention for his one-take debut The Absent Director.
SIFF’s best documentary award went to Canada’s Emmanuel Licha for Zo Reken, whose title refers to the nickname given to the Toyota Land Cruiser used by humanitarian aid organisations on the island of Haiti since the 2010 earthquake.
The award for best Balkan film went to Murina, the directorial feature debut of Croatia’s Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic, having previously picked up the Golden Camera following its premiere in Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes in 2021. A special mention was given to Alina Grigore’s Blue Moon from Romania.
The Fipresci jury gave its prize to The Windseeker by Romanian filmmaker Mihai Sofronea. In addition, festival directors Stefan Laudyn (Warsaw), Tiina Lokk (Tallinn) and Roberto Cueto (San Sebastian) selected Martin Makariev’s In The Heart of the Machine as the winner of the award for best Bulgarian feature film.
Several of this year’s award-winners, including Humble, January, Murina, Blue Moon and The Windseeker, had previously pitched as projects at previous editions of the festival’s parallel Sofia Meetings industry event, which is being held separately from June 6-12 due to pandemic.
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