CineLibri and comedy: two ways to spend an autumn evening

Autumn is when the city suddenly remembers

how good it looks in dark cinemas, full auditoriums and evenings with a plan.

Summer has stopped distracting us, and our phone calendars are getting a proper workout. EPAYGO points us in two rather different directions: first towards the big screen, where literature trades pages for frames; then towards a stage where two people with microphones turn fear, embarrassment and everyday absurdity into comedy.

CineLibri 2026: a civilisation of spectacle

Running from 15 October to 8 November, the 12th CineLibri festival reminds us that a good book and a good film can be just a screening apart. This year’s programme brings together more than 70 films from around 30 countries, alongside more than 40 special galas, premieres and encounters with directors, writers and actors.

There are new adaptations of major literary works,

selections from Cannes, Berlin and Venice, documentaries and short films. Titles include Les Misérables, Sense and Sensibility and Diary of a Chambermaid. In the Name of the Father screens at Lumière on 1 November at 19:15, with Jim Sheridan announced as the special guest. The festival takes place in Sofia and other Bulgarian cities, with tickets through EPAYGO. Pick a story, choose a screening and let it stay with you long after the credits. Check the language and subtitle details for your chosen film.

You’ll Offend Me: Donski and Zho take the mic

If “stand-up” sounds a little too imported, Donski and Zho have their own Bulgarian term for it: stoyanka. The essentials remain reassuringly simple. Someone stands in front of an audience with a microphone, talks, and people laugh. Here there are two of them, and everyday Bulgarian chaos supplies the material. Dimitar Donski made it as far as the US before returning and turning tours of more than 20 Bulgarian cities into an annual habit. Zho stays closer to his source material in Burgas’s Meden Rudnik neighbourhood, gathering domestic details, cultural habits, fears and absurdities and polishing them into comedy. In You’ll Offend Me, they bring to the stage the things we live with,

the things that frighten us and the things we’re slightly embarrassed to discuss.

There’s little filtering and enough self-mockery to look everyday monsters in the eye and laugh. The show is not recommended for under-16s and is performed in Bulgarian. EPAYGO lists further tour dates in November, including Svishtov on 11 November, Vratsa on 12 November and Botevgrad on 30 November. Choose the individual city listing for its venue, start time and ticket availability.

Autumn clearly has no intention of keeping quiet.

One evening, you settle into a dark cinema and wait for the first image. Another, you wait for the line that catches you somewhere between recognition and laughter. Cinema and comedy aren’t so far apart: both take a little of life, rearrange it, and hand it back so that we can see it differently.

Sofia exhibitions to catch this autumn

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