from 4 to 10 July 2022
Sopot
The Sopot Film Festival, organized by the Belgrade Festivals Centre in cooperation with the Sopot Cultural Centre, is being held for the 50th time from 4 to 10 July 2022, and the slogan of this year's festival is ‘The First Fifty’.
The concept of the Festival is to present to the audience Serbian films and minority co-productions made in the last year, and the previous period was extremely fruitful. During the seven days of the Sopot Film Festival, 27 films will be screened, three films out of competition, and four films for the youngest visitors. The diversity of film expression adorns this year's edition of the Sopot Festival. The programme will include films that had a large audience in cinemas (TOMA, SOUTH WIND 2: SPEED UP, HOW I LEARNED TO FLY...), then films that had a rich festival life and received significant accolades (AS FAR AS I CAN WALK, CELTS), as well as films that had their premiere at the 50th edition of the Belgrade FEST this year (COMMUNIST PARADISE, AS FAR AS I CAN WALK, AFTER THE WINTER, WORKING CLASS HEROES, DARKLING, HEROES, THE GAME).
At the opening ceremony on 4 July, in front of the Sopot Cultural Centre, traditionally, with fireworks, film crews and guests of the Festival will walk the red carpet, after which the honorary awards ceremony, as well as a concert programme will be held. On the occasion of the jubilee, the unveiling of the monument dedicated to the film great Bata Živojinović will follow, whose name Best Actor Festival award carries, and which has been presented for years. The Statuette of Freedom for Outstanding Contribution to Cinema Honorary Award will be presented to renowned artists – actresses Tanja Bošković, director and screenwriter Zdravko Šotra, playwright and director Dušan Kovačević and production designer Milenko Jeremić.
In the musical part of the opening programme of the Festival, a concert called ‘Koncert novih žitelja Kosmaja’ (Concert of new residents of Kosmaj) will be held, where the Rade Radivojević Orchestra and soloists Žarko Dančuo, Milica Njegomir, Ivan Milinković, Mari Mari and Ognjan Radivojević will perform. Visitors can also expect a performance by the ‘Kosmaj’ Cultural and Artistic Society from Sopot.
The opening of the exhibition of posters and photographs of the Festival entitled ‘50’ will be held in the Gallery of the Sopot Cultural Centre. The exhibition is inspired by various graphic materials – visual solutions, as well as photographs and clippings from the press that marked and followed five decades of its existence.
The monograph ‘50 godina Filmskog festivala u Sopotu’ (50 years of the Sopot Film Festival) will be presented, which will contain the history of previous editions of the Festival with chronological data, as well as valuable testimonies of people who shaped and built it during the past half century.
Two honorary film screenings are dedicated to Branko Pešić, the famous mayor of Belgrade (1922 - 1986) and Dragovan Jovanović, the initiator and one of the founders of Slobodarske filmske svečanosti. It is about the documentary film MAYOR by Vuk Dapčević, which is on the programme on Tuesday, 5 July at 3 p.m., while the screening of the film GIRL FROM THE MOUNTAINS is on Saturday, 9 July at the same time. Out of competition, the film NERAZUMEVALICA, directed by Aleksa Maksimović, will be screened, a fairy tale, whose creators wanted to show that children and people with intellectual disabilities can be involved in the process of artistic, film creation.
The Grand Prix awards for Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress and the Audience Award will be presented at the closing ceremony of the Festival on 10 July. The aforementioned awards will be decided by a jury consisting of Snežana Bogdanović, Andrej Šepetkovski and Radenko Ranković.
Admission to all Festival programmes is free.
