Love conquers Varna for a ninth consecutive year today with the start of the international film festival Love is Folly.

In the span of one week, the forum will show 31 films, 12 of which will compete for the top prize. Films will be shown in Hall 1 and Hall Europe of the Festival and Congress Centre. Traditionally, viewers have seen movies divided in three thematic groups - Panorama of Classics, The Brilliance of International Screens and Balkan Panorama.

The festival will officially open tonight with a showing of the U.S. production The Wedding Planner, starring Jennifer Lopez and Matthew McConaughey. The film Moulin Rouge, which opened the Cannes Film Festival this year, will be shown at the closing ceremony on Thursday. "The festival shows the cinema of the new century," said art critic Alexander Grozev, organizer of the film fiesta. "We have gathered a really interesting selection of films."

He explained that the major requirement while selecting the movies was the festival's theme. "They have to focus on the theme of love in the most general sense and meet the motto of the fest," Grozev said.

Love is Folly shows only productions of high cinematographic value, said Grozev. "Many films have been made by women, which shows an important tendency in the world of film making - the feminization of cinema."

One of the accents of the festival will be the strong presence of Bulgarian movies. Although The Tale of the Devil is the only one included in the competition of the festival, five other Bulgarian productions will be presented to the public for the first time. In addition, a Canadian production called I Am Here, which was shot in Bulgaria and stars Bulgarian actors, will also be shown. The domestic movies were made mostly by young directors and actors, continuing the recent trend of young Bulgarians entering the art of filmmaking.

"An important characteristic of the festival is the big number of European films, most of which are co-productions," pointed out Grozev. "This is another contemporary trend in cinema."

Films from Great Britain, Poland, Slovenia, France, Yugoslavia, and Russia will take the viewers to the world of love. The U.S. productions selected for the festival are what Grozev describes as "value movies, which are not cheap productions counting on the stupidity of the viewer."

Love is Folly is not aimed at a certain type of audience. The movies aim to reach a broad public. "We have many friends of the festival in Varna," Grozev said. "For the past nine years we have managed to educate a certain audience of the fest."

Love may or may not be a folly but it will be all over Varna this week.