Синелибри

The tradition & historical record

CineLibri (Bulgarian: Синелибри) is an annual international book and movie festival in Bulgaria founded in 2015, intended to showcase the best literary adaptations for cinema, both contemporary and classic. Jacqueline Wagenstein founded the event. ¹

Cinelibri is an annual event inspired by the interaction of arts – cinema and literature, in particular. It is held in Sofia, Plovdiv, Varna, Burgas, Gabrovo, Veliko Tarnovo, Stara Zagora and other cities every autumn, and showcases the best examples of films connected to literary works, both contemporary and classic. Cinelibri is an independent platform for European film productions and co-productions. Every year Cinelibri welcomes filmmakers, actors, screenwriters and audiovisual professionals, along with European film professionals and journalists to present films. The Official Competition includes 10 to 20 films from the last 18 months judged by an international jury composed of a President and Members (including producers, directors, writers, screenwriters, actors, film composers). The Cinelibri statuette for Best Feature Film is presented to the film's director or producer for their skillful interpretation of a literary work into the language of cinema. The festival also presents awards in the following categories: Best Short Film, Best Documentary and Best Costume Design in Bulgarian Contemporary Cinema. The festival also bestows a Cinelibri Lifetime Achievement Award to creators in the field of cinema, literature, and script adaptation. Cinelibri shows outstanding films out of competition in The Main Program, which highlights film works such as adaptations, biopics, films created by writing directors, original scripts authored by writers, films inspired by novels, poems, theater plays, graphic novels, and films with a subject somehow related to literature. All the selected titles are national and international premieres. ¹

The festival started in 2015, and was held in Sofia, Plovdiv and Varna in its first year. Among the honorary guests were the writer Margaret Mazzantini and the director and actor Sergio Castellitto. In 2016, five more cities joined the event, and the CineLibri Prize went to French literary critic Frédéric Beigbeder. In 2017 the festival was held in Sofia and 10 other cities. For the first time, a winner was announced out of a film competition list. The winner was nominated by an independent international jury consisting of Bruno Coulais, Keira Chaplin, Doriana Leondeff and Ilian Djevelekov. Rosso Istanbul directed by Ferzan Özpetek won the award for best film adaptation. The Award for Entire Contribution went to the European director Volker Schlöndorff, who presented in Sofia his latest film, Return to Montauk. Among the guests of the festival in 2017 was David Grossman, whose novel A Horse Walks into a Bar won the 2017 Man Booker International Prize. In 2018, the CineLibri award for best adaptation of the year was presented to See You Up There (Au revoir là-haut) directed by Albert Dupontel. The honorary Cinelibri Award for Entire Contribution went to the British novelist and screenwriter Ian McEwan, who presented the film On Chesil Beach directed by Dominic Cooke. In 2019, the grand prize was presented to Burning (2018)' adapted from the short story Burning Barn by Haruki Murakami. The jury included David Lagercrantz, Radu Mihăileanu, Loredana Cannata and Irini Jambonas. In 2020, CineLibri Best Literary Adaptation Award was presented to Berlin Alexanderplatz (2020) 2020. ¹

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “CineLibri”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. ¹

CineLibri is international book and movie festival, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. ²

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