Two August 8s sit at opposite ends of Bulgaria’s history and its mood: a midnight coup that toppled the country’s first prince, and, decades later, a festive gathering of Balkan cinema on the Black Sea coast.
August 8, 1886 — Officers Depose Prince Alexander I
Under cover of night, a group of Russophile officers and military cadets stormed the royal palace in Sofia, disarmed the guard, and forced Prince Alexander of Battenberg to sign his abdication at gunpoint. Resentful of the prince’s military appointments and egged on by Russian diplomats hostile to his rule, the plotters briefly installed a rival government.
Alexander was back in Bulgaria within days, greeted as a hero — but with both Russia and Germany refusing to stand behind him, he abdicated for good later that month. His departure opened the way for Stefan Stambolov to take charge.
August 8, 1965 — The First Balkan Film Festival Opens
Varna opened the first Balkan Film Festival, drawing together the film industries of Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, Turkey, and Yugoslavia in a rare instance of Cold War-era cultural cooperation reaching across ideological lines. The event had been agreed the year before at a UNESCO commission meeting in Bucharest.
It ran for a week on the coast, and it turned out to be a one-off in Varna: later editions travelled between other Balkan cities over the following decades rather than settling into a fixed annual home.
The series continues on either side, at August 7 and August 9. For a change of pace, browse our guides to the best of Bulgaria or drift over the country in Bulgaria From Above.
