site.btaDirector Adela Peeva Celebrates Birthday with Screenings of "Whose Is This Song?" in Seven Countries

The documentary Whose Is This Song? will have simultaneous screenings in seven countries in late February and early March 2023, director Adela Peeva told BTA. The event is part of the Film O'Clock International Festival, based in Romania, which brings together countries united by the 25th Eastern Meridian - Romania, Lithuania, Ukraine, Greece, Bulgaria, Egypt, and South Africa.

Peeva was invited both as a jury member and as a participant in an online conference of women in film art, organized by International Inner Wheel, one of the largest voluntary women's NGOs in the world.  

The 20th anniversary of the premiere of Whose Is This Song? will also be celebrated in Bulgaria later in 2023. Peeva considered the popularity of the film among young people as the most interesting thing. 

"Unfortunately, many reasons obstructed the start of my new film for two years now. The film fell into an in-between time, which delayed it. Moreover, I am not spared by the lobbies in Bulgarian cinema," the director said. "The protagonist was the youngest elected municipal councilor of Roma ethnicity, elected in the local elections in October 2019, when he was an 18-year-old student. He has grown up now," she added.

Peeva graduated in filmmaking from the Academy for Theatre, Film, Radio and Television in Belgrade in 1970. She worked as a director of TV productions in former Yugoslavia. Returning to Bulgaria, she made over 50 films in the Time Documentary Films Studios, including A House on a Rock, a House on Sand (1998), and Superfluous People (1999). Her most successful film is the highly acclaimed Whose Is This Song? (2003), a coproduction between Bulgaria, Germany, Belgium, Finland, Denmark, and the Netherlands. Divorce Albanian Style (2007) has had over 30 festival screenings and won 12 awards.

Her feature film debut The Neighbour (1988) was voted among the top 50 best-loved Bulgarian films. It was selected for the Women's Film Festival in Sceaux, Paris and the Madrid International Film Festival. In 1990, Adela Peeva set up her own production company, Adela Media. She has made over 30 documentaries with partners from Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Finland, Denmark, Belgium, Turkey, and Serbia and the TV channels ZDF/ARTE, RBB/ARTE, WDR, and RTBF. She is the only Bulgarian director with two European Film Academy nominations, for Whose Is This Song? and Divorce Albanian Style. In 2018, Long Live Bulgaria was the first documentary ever put to the vote for a Bulgarian nominee for the Academy Awards. In 2011, Peeva was a special guest at the Cannes Film Festival as one of 20 prominent European filmmakers invited to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the MEDIA programme.

In 2015, Peeva created the first and only website dedicated to women film directors in Bulgarian cinema, www.jeni-bg-kino.com.

Peeva was decorated with the Order of the Balkan Range, First Class; the Order of Sts Cyril and Methodius, First Class; and the Culture Ministry's Order of Golden Age.