Blaga’s Lessons by Stephan Komandarev wins the grand prix at Karlovy Vary film festival
The crystal globe of the Karlovy Vary International Festival (KVIFF) went to Stephan Komandarev, this year's recipient of the Darko Bratina award. The Grand Prix was presented to him by the American actress Robin Wright and the president of the festival Jiří Bartoška.
In total, the Bulgarian director won three awards for his eighth feature film, Blaga's Lessons, at KVIFF, in addition to the main award, the award for best actress, Eli Skorčeva, and the grand prize of the ecumenical jury. Komandarev will be a guest of the Tribute to a vision film festival, which will take place between October 16 and 22 this year. We are looking forward to seeing his retrospective together with him, a trip to the cinemas on the Slovenian-Italian border, and also his masterclass.
At the festival, the director described his film, which is a Bulgarian-German co-production, as a tribute to his parents' generation, many of whom fell victim to the rough transition to capitalism. "Komandarev has an incredible sense of detecting the nerve points of modern society, not only Bulgarian, where there is corruption, social imbalances, trampling on human dignity and, last but not least, the remnants of former ideologies that mix in the mud with new ones built solely on the imperative of capital," Patricija Maličev, program selector of the Tribute to a vision festival, justified.
Blaga's Lessons follows the story of a teacher who loses her life savings in a phone scam and then turns the tables by becoming a con artist herself. The jury's main prize for the Crystal Globe consists of 25,000 dollars, which will be divided between the director and the producers - Katja Tričková in addition to Komandarev, the festival announced.