Stara Zagora has completed the ninth edition of the New European Cinema Festival “Golden Lime.” This event was supposed to be a celebratory tenth edition, but due to the Covid pandemic in 2020, the festival did not take place that year.
Ten years ago, director Magdalena Ralcheva established this cultural forum in her hometown with great passion, viewing it as an adventure with an uncertain outcome. The challenge of organizing such an event in a provincial town, where the audience has only been able to watch movies in malls for over 25 years and where only those over 40 years old remember the days of studio films, film lectures, and interactions with filmmakers and critics, as well as the brief existence of the film archive cinema in Stara Zagora, is indeed significant.
In the early editions of the festival, its creators were pleased when about fifty people attended screenings at the opera house and the Regional Library, even though films were shown for free with the support of the municipality. Now, ten years later, some screenings are being held in full auditoriums. The people of Stara Zagora look forward to the festival, and some cinema enthusiasts even take time off work to see more films. In short, “Golden Lime” has developed an audience over the years and has “put down roots” in the city of linden trees.
The audience seeks a variety of films and, of course, is not always prepared to understand and appreciate some challenging dramatic portrayals and aesthetic choices. But this is also normal.
This year, the festival showcased 43 films from 20 European countries, including feature, documentary, and animated films. French cinema was strongly represented, as was Danish cinema, and there were also co-productions, with Albanian cinema making its debut at the festival for the first time. The selection was meticulous, as in every edition, and the films in the competition program were evaluated by an international jury chaired by Professor Henri Koulev, a leading figure in Bulgarian animation.
Of course, the awards are part of the festival excitement. The “Golden Lime” for Best Film once again went to Italy, awarded to director Nanni Moretti for “Three Floors”—undoubtedly the favorite among the nine other works selected for competition. This film demonstrates that the language of great cinema is understandable not only to professionals but also to all audiences, along with its messages.
“Moretti is wise, but he doesn’t preach; great cinema needs nothing else,” commented jury member Henri Koulev on the selection. According to him, “the films are uneven, but the criteria are the same. This jury made this decision, and it is for the benefit of the festival,” asserted the professor at the concluding press conference. He emphasized that a hallmark of “Golden Lime” is that not many awards are distributed. Here are this year’s winners:
The Directing Award went to Andrey Paunov for “January,” based on a play by Yordan Radichkov. Fiona Howe, a cinematographer and composer from the United Kingdom and a jury member, appreciated the director’s effort to seek a new visual language. This film remained perhaps the most misunderstood and unappreciated by the audience, but that was to be expected. Experimental aesthetics and more complex dramatic portrayals and ideas naturally challenge the viewer accustomed to nightly television series. While commercial cinema might cater to the viewer, films like “January” require the audience to seek out the creator, even though their chances of connecting are slim, as Henri Koulev pointed out.
The award from the Union of Bulgarian Film Workers this time was chosen by the jury. It was given to Yosif Surchadzhiev for his performances in “January” and “Women Truly Weep.” The two roles are quite different; in the women’s film, men are portrayed as contemptible, including the father, whose character in the script is rather schematic, necessitating Surchadzhiev to fill in dramatic gaps. In contrast, the male-centered “January” provided him with many more opportunities.
The “Golden Lime” award for Best Male Role went to Aron Molnar for his performance in Gabor Herendi’s film “Toxicoma.” The work is based on the memoirs of Dezso Szabo, a Hungarian actor who describes his challenging battle with drug addiction. Molnar builds the character scene by scene, episode by episode, without overstating the drama, and very convincingly fits within the film’s stylistic framework.
The jury chose to award the Best Actress prize to Ralitsa Stoyanova for her role in “Women Truly Weep,” directed by Mina Mileva and Vesela Kazakova. The film, which has sparked debate among critics and audiences due to its provocative yet aesthetically self-serving sexual scenes and vulgar language, showcases Ralitsa’s strong on-screen presence and charisma. The actress received her statuette on stage at the Stara Zagora Opera personally from Serbian director Stefan Filipovich, a jury member. She and Kazakova enjoyed the festival as guests, relishing in the attention from both the audience and the press. One of Ralitsa’s upcoming roles will be in a new film by Magdalena Ralcheva, which begins shooting in the fall.
Within the competition program, noteworthy entries included the French adaptation of Balzac’s “Eugénie Grandet,” as well as the France-Germany-Belgium-Sweden co-production “Bergman Island.”
The out-of-competition films were genre-diverse, thematically rich, and relevant in terms of issues. In “Parallel Mothers,” Pedro Almodóvar once again showcased his brilliant style in one of his ongoing narratives about women, which could easily have been transformed into a banal melodrama by many other directors.
The production from Belarus, Russia, and Germany, “Lessons in Persian,” based on a true story, presents the remarkable tale of a Jewish man who survived a concentration camp thanks to fate.
The Spanish-Italian film “Alcaraz,” directed by Carla Simón, is not about the young professional tennis star Carlos Alcaraz, but rather tells the story of a farming family from Catalonia grappling with the collapse of their patriarchal lifestyle and customs. This work arrived in Stara Zagora with a “Golden Bear” from the Berlin Film Festival but did not receive the same applause as it did in Germany, once again highlighting the disconnect between the audience and the creator.
Our documentary cinema, which has never lagged behind in achievements compared to feature films, was well represented at the festival. “Life from Life” by Stefan Komandarev, “Geo Milev in the Labyrinth of Time” by Kostadin Bonev, and “The Guardians of Our Conscience” by Stanislav Donchev were among the works showcased at “Golden Lime.”
The twenty-seven-minute film “Ballad for Galileo” by Ralitsa Dimitrova is a beautiful impression born from the director’s encounter with artist Galileo Simeonov. In the village house of his grandfather and father, which he has partially restored after it was burned, the artist resides amid the ruins with his paintings, and his reflections on life and art are like pearls of wisdom.
Of course, a film festival is much more than the awards it gives. It is about the audience’s encounters with such diverse national cultures, explorations, and achievements that they experienced over the five festival days. This is the essence of gathering and showcasing so many works in such a short time.
Next year, Stara Zagora will once again become a stage for new European cinema and its latest examples. God willing!
