Ellipsis Independent Student Media student club, together with Media Studies Department and the Admissions Office at AUBG, invites creative and socially engaged young people to express their view on current social issues. The festival, titled “Young Voices of Change”, is open to both beginners and professionals, and to students from the universities in Bulgaria.
The media festival covers three categories:
- audio stories,
- fiction video,
- non-fiction video.
Anyone interested can participate individually or in a team of up to five people and will have approximately two months to create their project or to submit an already completed one. Each project, regardless of category, can be up to 15 minutes long. There are no restrictions on the type of equipment used to shoot and edit the projects, nor on the language in which they are presented, as long as English subtitles are provided. The projects will be evaluated by a jury, which will rank the best of them in each category. The winning teams will receive special prizes.
Become a participant
The jury members for the festival are representatives from diverse media spheres:
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Maria Milkova is a journalist and videographer with more than 15 years of experience in the field. She has worked for some of the major TV networks in Bulgaria, such as NOVA. Since 2019 she has been creating video stories for Deutsche Welle’s Bulgarian section. Her most recent professional milestone is becoming Editor-in-Chief at the student journalism platform sCOOL Media.
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Blagoy Momchilov is an award-winning professional videographer and motion video producer and director. He has 31 years of visual experience, serving as senior videographer at BTV (2000-2014) and creative producer at Nova TV (2014-2020). He is teaching a masterclass in Visual Storytelling at the New Bulgarian University.
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Elenko Elenkov is the founder and one of the publishers of Govori Internet, a podcast platform with nine weekly podcasts on various cultural, professional, and lifestyle topics. He also has more than 10 years of experience in project management and event organizing.
- Maria Cheresheva is a freelance reporter and radio host at Darik. She has published in global media organizations such as ZDF, Lighthouse Reports, Balkan Insight, Deutsche Welle, and BBC. Founder and Vice-President of the Association of European Journalists-Bulgaria (AEJ). Human rights, media literacy, and press freedom activist.
- Chris Zahariev is a professional director with various short feature films and advertisement projects. He is creative and film director at the production company Razkaz Studio, and co-owner of Храбър* (Hrabar*), a fashion brand helping desolated Bulgarian villages. He also has experience in the music industry creating music videos for famous Bulgarian pop and rap artists.
The deadline for submitting projects is April 19, on the form received after registration.
The initiator of the media festival, Ellipsis Independent Student Media, is the newest journalism club at AUBG. Its members are committed to tell journalistic stories and to create entertaining videos and short films, thereby gaining practical skills in writing, editing, filming, interviewing, reporting, news-finding, marketing and financing modeled after working in a real-world modern media environment.
