Serbian filmmaker Srdan Golubovic's family drama-thriller The Trap (Klopka) won the Grand Prix at this year's Sofia International Film Festival.

The Serbian-German-Hungarian co-production received its world premiere at last month's Berlinale Forum before opening the Belgrade International Film Festival FEST. It subsequently topped Serbia's box office ahead of the current US releases.

Another co-production with Germany, recognised by the International Jury headed by Tajik director Bakhtiar Khudoinazarov, was Iglika Trifonova's Investigation. The Bulgarian-Dutch-German co-production took the No Man's Land Award for Best Balkan Film and Best Bulgarian Feature Film.

Sofia's opening film - Dusan Milic's German-Serbian-Austrian-Bulgarian co-production Gucha! Distant Trumpet - received the Audience Award ahead of its theatrical release in Bulgaria by Art Fest.

Other awards

Special Jury Prize

Fish Dreams (Sonhos De Peixe) (dir:Kirill Mikhanovksy)

Jameson Short Film Award

The Minutes After (Nikolay Todorov)

Best director

Chris Kraus (Four Minutes (Vier Minuten)

FIPRESCI award

Four Minutes (Vier Minuten) (Chris Kraus)

Sofia Municipality Awards

Wim Wenders, Lyudmil Staykov and Jiri Menzel


Co-production Forum

At the Sofia co-production forum, Estonian producer Riina Sildos revealed that Rene Vilbre's second feature after his box-office hit Mat The Cat has already attracted Finnish producer Aleksi Bardy of Helsinki Film as a co-producer.

I Was Here. First Arrest, a $0.9m (Euros 700,000) adaptation of a bestselling novel by Sass Henno is set to shoot from mid-September 2007 in Estonia and has also generated 'strong interest' from Finnish financiers, according to Sildos.

French producer Christoph Bruchner of Paris-based Les Films de la butte told ScreenDaily during the Meetings that Germany's Get Lost Films, which has been recently set up as a genre label by producers Peter Rommel and Thomas Haeberle, is attached as a co-producer to Stephane Robelin's $6.3m (Euros 4.8m) To The Moon And Back And All Around The World.

The drama about five friends confronted with the problems of old age already has Jeanne Moreau, Claude Rich, Anouk Aimee and Pierre Richard confirmed for the cast.

In addition, Sofia's festival director Stefan Kita Kitanov announced that his production company RFF International s next production The World Is Big And Salvation Lurks Around The Corner will begin principal photography in co-production with Germany s Pandora Film from April 24 in Sofia.

The project had been presented at a previous edition of the Sofia Meetings as well as Connecting Cottbus and the Netherlands Production Platform, among others.

This year's prize for Best Pitch was awarded by the Sofia Meetings' participants to Srdjan Koljevic's project The Woman With The Broken Nose which will be produced by The Trap's co-producers Film House Bas Celik, Mediopolis Filmproduktion and UJ Budapest Film Studio with Slovenia's Emotionfilm.

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