Author: Sandra Wolf

We congratulate Eliza Petkova on the 20th Sofia Meetings Award for her project in development DISSONANCE (BG). Eliza and her producer Veselka Kiryakova have been granted a script consultancy in the amount of 5.000 Euro with Steven Goldsmith, an Irish-American script doctor and writer.

 

DE / BG, 2020, 97 min, OV with German subs
A film by Eliza Petkova

According to the legend, a dragon named Gincho is responsible for the disappearance of young women in the Bulgarian mountain village of Pirin. Almost only old people still live there without a doctor or priest, whose many empty houses are gradually being swallowed up by nature. But the committed mayor has not given up faith in the future. He wants to turn Pirin into a tourist attraction – and is trying to find a girlfriend on the Internet along the way. (Filmfestival Max Ophüls Preis 2022)

German cinema release: 9 March 2023 at 8 p.m., in presence of the movie team at
Kino Krokodil, Greifenhagener Str. 32, 10437 Berlin.
Further details & tickets under this link (external)

Disney+ has announced a new in-house production. HABIBI BABA BOOM, written by Sascha Vredenburg and Omar El-Saeidi, is produced by Bantry Bay.

On the occasion of the Berlinale, the film by Cem Kaya and Mehmet Akif Büyükatalay was awarded the prizes for best documentary and best editing by the Association of German Film Critics on Sunday.

This continues the success story of the film, which premiered at the Berlinale in 2022 and won the Panorama Audience Award.

Tina Satter’s film is based on her successful play IS THIS A ROOM and will be screened at the Berlinale in the Panorama section.
IS THIS A ROOM was initially created as an Off-Broadway production. Due to its great success, the play then also ran on Broadway starting in the fall of 2021. Subsequently, the production made guest appearances at international festivals in Europe (including the Wiener Festwochen, FIND Festival/Schaubühne Berlin).
In parallel, Tina shot REALITY, starring Sydney Sweeney (pictured) and Josh Hamilton.

Young U.S. Air Force employee Reality Winner is suspected of whistleblowing. FBI agents first search her home, then begin a grueling interrogation.

“In speaking of these deep, lingering wounds that colonialism and racism have inflicted, and how she speaks of them, Diouf does the only thing that can perhaps help heal trauma at least a little bit: She brings them out of the repressed, the concealed, the forgotten into our consciousness, and she does it in such a poetic and empathetic way that when we listen to them, they also deeply touch white people, descendants of the European colonial powers, and move them to think about the causes of these wounds and to relate to them.” – The jury’s statement on the selection of the 2022 Radio Play of the Year.

The award ceremony will take place on Friday, March 3, 2023, at the Funkhaus Köln.
Start: 6:30 pm, free admission,
Registration required at <koelner-kongress.de>.

PISTONS by Penda Diouf
dt. by Annette Bühler-Dietrich
Director: Christine Nagel
Production: NDR
length: 80 min

For the radio play and the jury’s detailed statement, please follow this link.