Director Ivan Nichev will talk to the audience in Burgas after the premiere screening of "Taxi to Paradise" on 6 November. The film is one of ten European titles based on literary works that Cinelibri is showing in the city this year.

The ten films for Burgas were announced on Monday, 12 October. Some have won awards at international festivals, and the casts include Penélope Cruz, Monica Bellucci, Glenn Close, Isabelle Huppert, Diane Kruger and Daniel Brühl. The themes are love, identity, memory, freedom and the consequences of human choices. The genres range from historical and psychological dramas to romances, comedies and philosophical tales.

The previous development: Sinelibri 2026 in Burgas: 10 films based on books, with Penélope Cruz and Monica Bellucci

"Taxi to Paradise" is a black comedy that Nichev made with Todor Chapkanov. It is based on the novella "Night Vigil" by Dimitar Dinev, a prominent Austrian writer of Bulgarian origin. The cast includes Velislav Pavlov, Stoyan Doychev, Desi Morales, Daniel Vladimirov and Dilyana Popova.

The premiere is on 24 October at the Lumière cinema in Sofia, with some of the crew present. After the screening, viewers can share their views and ask questions. Nichev will also meet audiences in Sofia and Plovdiv, where the film will be shown on 7 November.

It is the second Bulgarian title in the competition programme. The first is "Ostaynitsa" by director Kostadin Bonev, which competes with eight other films. Rene Karabash wrote the script, based on her novel of the same name, which made this year's shortlist for the International Booker Prize. Massimo Foletti shot the film, and Bulgaria, Italy and Albania co-produced it.

Albanian actress Altea Lazaj plays Bekia and her alter ego Matya. She was a special guest at the premiere of "Ostaynitsa" at the Lumière on the evening of 16 October. The film was shown again at the Odeon cinema on 17 October, with her present. It played at the Lumière for the second time, after its first screening at Golden Rose.

"I'll allow myself to say that I don't hope the film was liked. For me it is a masterpiece, however immodest that sounds," Lazaj said at the premiere. She said she was overcome with emotion and close to tears, and hoped every viewer had found something about themselves in the film. She did not know Karabash before filming, and now she feels like her "plus one".

After the screening, Karabash and Bonev met the audience. The writer said the evening at the Lumière was special for her. She enjoyed working on the film, she said, because she met someone with a similar, even identical, sensibility. Bonev gave her full freedom with the script, but also worked on it himself, and some characters and storylines were developed further for the language of cinema.

"Working on the film, I felt that Rene and I, like two computers, were in constant contact with each other," Bonev said.

The third title with Bulgarian involvement in the programme is "The Axis of Life". The foreign films in the selection include "The Black Ball", co-produced by Pedro Almodóvar, "Water for the Flowers" by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and "Fatherland" by Paweł Pawlikowski.