Stories Only Exist When Remembered wins top prize at Sofia IFF

by Stefan Dobroiu

19/03/2012 - Julia Murat's Brazil-Argentina-France co-production Stories Only Exist When Remembered received the most important award of the Sofia International Film Festival, the Grand Prix Award, during a ceremony held Saturday at the Bulgarian National Palace of Culture.

Apart from the top prize, the evening's most important winner was Bulgarian director Konstantin Bojanov, who got the Best Director award for his Ave [trailer, film focus], which also received Best Balkan Film award (the section's special mentions went to actress Ariane Labed for Alps [trailer] and actor Serkan Ercan for Toll Booth), a special trophy from the Bulgarian Guild of Film Critics and the Kodak Award for Best Bulgarian Feature Film.

The Jury Special Award went to Jaffe Zinn's Magic Valley (US), while The Enemy [trailer, film focus], directed by Dejan Zecevic, received the FIPRESCI award for the best film in the festival's competition.

The Audience Award, given to a film from the international or the Balkan competition, was received by the Macedonia-Serbia co-production Punk's Not Dead, directed by Vladimir Blazevski.

Directors Hugh Hudson (UK), Danis Tanovic (Bosnia), Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Turkey) and Georgi Stoyanov (Bulgaria) received the Sofia Award for their contribution to world cinema.

The awards of the festival's co-production market, the Sofia Meetings, were received by Rhinoceros (Ukraine), with Oleg Sentsov and Olga Zhurhenko attached as director and producer respectively and Stefan Valdobrev's Pancho and Alice (Bulgaria), with Mina Mileva and Vesela Kazakova as producers.