Quo Vadis

"Until now, Bulgaria has benefited very little from the Recovery and Resilience Plan (RSP). The last tranche is from December 2022 and is 2.7 billion, in the following two years we have not received any money - to date, this is the first and last tranche for our country".

Director Jasmila Zbanic's Oscar-nominated 'Quo Vadis, Aida?', about a Bosnian translator for the United Nations trying to save her family amid the violence and chaos of the Srebrenica genocide, is one of several films focusing on armed conflict that will be screened at the 27th Sarajevo Film Festival, which opens on Friday.

"There is absolutely no acceptable reason for glorifying convicted war criminals," the new High Representative to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Germany's Christian Schmidt, said.

He explained that many things needed to be understood when looking at the past.

This year is already promising, although the world premieres of some eagerly awaited films have been postponed due to the situation with the pandemic.
Thus, Disney's "Cruella", played by Oscar winner Emma Stone, will be shown on May 28, while Marvel's "Black Widow", with Scarlett Johansson, is planned for July 9.

Nine feature films and one short film addressing the subjects of conflict and reconciliation will be screened online and at the Meeting Point cinema in the Bosnian capital from April 24-30 as part of the Sarajevo Film Festival's 'Dealing with the Past' programme.

The programme was launched in 2016 with the aim of initiating an honest dialogue about the recent past in the Balkans.

The US Motion Picture Academy on Monday confirmed its nomination list for the 93rd Oscars Awards, which includes two movies from southeastern European countries competing in the category of Best International Feature Film. A Bulgarian actress has also been nominated for the Best Supporting Actress award.

The Romanian insurance market had a weight of 2.3% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2020, and the first gross premiums have gone up to 11.5 billion RON, rising by 5% from 2019, announced on Thursday, during a specialty conference, Nicu Marcu, the chairman of the the Financial Supervisory Authority (ASF).

Two stories from the Balkans, told by a Romanian-born man and a Bosnian woman have been put on a shortlist of 15 films in the Best International Feature category for the upcoming Oscars, the US Academy Awards said in a statement on Tuesday evening.

It strikes a balance between authenticity - the film largely presents court-established facts about the Srebrenica genocide - and the artistic need to send a strong message. Zbanic uses characters that are based on real people, like Ratko Mladic, or UN commanders Thomas Karremans and Robert Franken, but creates others to represent the fate of the thousands of Bosniaks who suffered.

''Europe's main task is to restore the spirit of solidarity, of common purpose and common destiny'', the President of the Party of European Socialists Sergei Stanishev said at the international conference Quo Vadis Europe: Globalism vs. Populism held in Bulgaria's capital Sofia on Tuesday, BNR reported.

The forum marks the 10th  anniversary of Bulgaria's membership in the EU.