Bulgaria's "Lady Zee" picks up Sarajevo award

With over 162 films in 19 sections, the Sarajevo festival that closed on August 27 is now a major event internationally - and a showcase for Balkan cinema. This year, the main award went to "Lady Zee" (Leidi Zi), a tragi-comedy directed by Georgi Bulgjerov and co-written with Marin Damyanov, out of 11 films in competition.

The co-production market CineLink, linked to the Rotterdam Film Festival Cinemart, hosted 180 participants, up double on the previous year. The Bosnia-Herzegovina Minister of Culture Gavrilo Grahovac and Serbian Minister of Culture Dragan Kojadinovic also signed the "Ohrid Initiative" at the festival, a regional film co-production agreement which will include all former Yugoslav republics, plus Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Greece.

Cinelink shortlists East European writers

The Sarajevo festival will again provide the platform for the third Cinelink, a programme that hooks interesting scripts up with the industry. Ten projects from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, Romania, Slovenia and Serbia and Montenegro have been chosen. The writers will undergo a series of wrokshops to get the scripts in shape for presenting them to the industry at the Sarajevo Film Festival in August.

Of the ten projects, two will ultimately be awarded a prize of €25,000. See here for details of Cinelink.

East of Eden: Deadline for East European filmmakers

The East of Eden training programme is run by North by Northwest specifically for film professionals from the new EU Member States and Bulgaria, and offers professional training to screenwriter / director / producer teams. Working with international tutors with proven industry track records, East of Eden participants develop their projects in their creative teams, and with their colleauges in screenwriter / director / producer groups.

The programme consists of 3 residential workshops over a 7-month period. The working language of the workshops is English, although scripts may be written in any of the official languages of the eligible countries. Deadline for applications is December 1. For more details, visit North by Northwest.