After a socially modest edition in March, which was nonetheless rich in terms of content and took place both online and offline, Bulgaria’s main film festival is now taking a chance on returning to normal. Showing a compact programme that summarises the best from the spring edition, between 14 and 30 September, the Sofia International Film Festival offers the luxury of most of its titles being introduced by their authors during live and outdoor screenings. The festival clearly emphasises the importance of physical events over online streaming.

Georgian director Levan Koguashvili will present his latest film Brighton 4^th [+lee también:
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A number of other established Eastern European film artists will attend the event to personally discuss their works with spectators: provocative Russian director Ilya Khrzhanovskiy (DAU. Natasha [+lee también:
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Two contemporary film masters will be honoured with retrospectives during the autumn SIFF edition: Finnish veteran Mika Kaurismaki, who will also receive the Sofia Municipality award, and Bulgarian-Canadian animator Theodore Ushev, who was serving as the head of the international competition jury in March, and will showcase his experimental work for the first time in Bulgaria.

The documentary selection’s special guest is German filmmaker Andres Fayel, invited to introduce his films Boys and Ecocide, while Bulgarian documentaries Occupation or Liberation by Svetoslav Ovcharov and Destiny of a Bum by Anna Kitanova will have their premieres.