The 27th Darko Bratina Award goes to Alexandra Gulea
Film and audiovisual culture are essential tools for understanding social change over time and for fostering connections between cultures, both near and distant. This conviction guided Darko Bratina—sociologist, film critic, later Senator of the Italian Republic, and founder of Kinoatelje. He understood film culture as “the encounter between audiences and the film work itself, or with the issues of cinema, society, and culture through which it is expressed, unfolding on the level of critical discussion.”
It is upon these principles that the Tribute to a Vision crossborder film festival and the Darko Bratina Award were established, the latter presented annually since 1999. Among its recipients are Béla Tarr, Yervant Gianikian e Angela Ricci Lucchi, Nicolas Philibert, Stefan Komandarev, Peter Zeitlinger, Karpo Godina, Franco Giraldi, Jan Cvitkovič, Laila Pakalnina, Petra Seliškar, Maja Weiss and others.
Dedicated to filmmakers who use cinema to open new perspectives on social relations, historical contexts, and the human condition, the festival will once again bring together Nova Gorica and Gorizia as a shared space for cinematic reflection from 29 September to 4 October 2026. For more than twenty-five years, Kinoatelje has been creating, at the crossroads of these two cities, a space where the world can be seen from a different perspective.
The festival's central event, on 2 October 2026, will be the presentation of the 27th Darko Bratina Award. Since 1999, Kinoatelje has conferred this award on filmmakers whose body of work is distinguished by a strong artistic vision, a profound sensitivity to social and historical contexts, and a commitment to intercultural dialogue.
The 27th Darko Bratina Awars goes to
the director Alexandra Gulea
This year's recipient is the Romanian filmmaker Alexandra Gulea, whose films reveal overlooked communities, invisible borders, and stories that only come into focus when viewed with careful attention and deep empathy.
The festival will honour Alexandra Gulea with a retrospective of selected works and a masterclass, culminating in the official award ceremony on Friday, October 2nd.
More informations about the awardee here
Motivation
"Kinoatelje is awarding the 2026 Darko Bratina Award to Alexandra Gulea for her original body of work, in which a personal search for roots becomes a universal story about the deeper meaning of community, identity, and belonging. In her work, she weaves together performance art and anthropological research, personal inquiry and theatre of the absurd.
Her highly original reworking of an individual quest becomes a communal narrative and a collective touchstone against the chaos of nation-states that fail to give dignity to the communities that form them. In her delicate yet irreverent way, Gulea couldn’t care less about the homeland, patriarchy, nation-states or generally accepted truths of convenience; instead, her work takes us deep, getting to the heart of her personal quest for origins (familial and popular).
She hails from Romania, a country that has emerged as one of Europe’s most dynamic centres of cinema over the last twenty years, and has won numerous awards at major festivals. Gulea has dedicated much of her research to the culture of her country, exploring themes such as cultural hybridisation, mental distress, and music.
As the daughter and editor of one of Romania’s leading directors, Stere Gulea she has absorbed cinema as a natural language, one that has accompanied her throughout her life. Her cinematic language is that of the Lumière brothers, but also that of Méliès. The beauty she pursues through her films is rare — wild and sophisticated all at once."