“It is foolish to make plans for life without being sure in tomorrow.” These words, belonging to Lucius Annaeus Seneca, which have been proven true so long ago, seem particularly fitting now, in 2020. A year which started like any other – with a whole lot of plans, new ideas and enthusiasm, but then, all of a sudden in March, we all seemed to start living in a new reality, more like some kind of fantasy movie. The Covid-19 pandemic overturned the agenda, and the priorities of people in Europe and the world.

A number of cultural and other public events planned in advance were cancelled or postponed in the hope that the worst of the coronacrisis would be over. Bulgaria is no exception, and after the initial complete freeze of all cultural events, actors, musicians, artists started to look for alternative ways to reach out to audiences. Gradually some events started taking place - outdoors, to a limited audience and in compliance with all anti-epidemic measures.

That is what happened to the festival which opens in Sofia today, 20 August. Having been scheduled for the beginning of July, Sofia Summer Festival was pushed back to the second half of August. Its venue is the space popularly known as Southern Park 2 (next to the National Palace of Culture and the Earth and Man Museum). It will go on until the end of September, and the open-air programme will offer a heady brew of music, theatre, the latest in films but also our favourite movies. Admission to some of the events is free, tickets for others are available online.

“For the moment we have only announced the events during the first days of the festival, and we are still working on the rest of it,” said Borislav Chuchkov one of the organizers of the festival for the BNR’s Radio Sofia channel. “Our aim is for the focus in the film and theatre programme to be on high-quality comedy.”

The film screenings are most diverse, featuring Bulgarian movies like Monkey (2016) directed by Dimitar Kotzev-Shosho and The Father (2019) by Petar Valchanov and Kristina Grozeva, but also European films from the selection for this year’s edition of the Master of Art festival. The theatre shows from the programme are from the repertoire of the Sofia theatres - Theatre 199 and Vuzrazhdane. The musicians who will perform at the festival include the inimitable Ivo Dimchev, and the Bulgarian rock band SEVI.