The thirteenth edition of Early Bird International Student Film Festival was held from 01 to 05 November 2017 in Sofia. This year its program included 145 feature, documentary, animation and experimental films by students from 44 countries. Beyond the traditionally strong presence of universities from the Old continent, the map of the festival now covers countries like Nigeria, Lebanon, Costa Rica, Kyrgyzstan.
For the first time the tradition President of the Jury to be the student, who received Eary Bird Grand Award from last year's edition of the festival, is disturbed. Due to urgent commitments in connection with the filming of her latest film, Alexandra Terpinska from Poland, who won Early Bird 2016 for her film "America" was not present at the festival. The President of the Jury was the founder of the festival Alexey Hristov, and members the journalist and producer at Bulgarian National Television Evgenia Atanasova-Teneva and the professor from the Romanian Academy of Theatrical Arts and Cinematography Doru Nitescu. Besides the awards in the traditional ten categories, the Jury also asigned 11th prize - in support of our partnership with the Southeast-European Cinema Schools (SEECS), so the total prize fund of the festival already is 4400 USD.
Two Master classes are held in this edition of the festival. How to make a film worthy of an Oscar? shared the talented Bulgarian actress Margita Gosheva, who presented her work on the film of Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov "Slava". And The jump from shorts to the first feature revealed the member of the Jury prof. Doru Nitescu.
The thirteenth edition of Early Bird enjoys the greatest international presence of all editions so far. More than 40 students from Hungary, Germany, Romania, Lebanon, Poland, Turkey, Georgia, Netherlands and Israel became part of the Early Bird event.