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Elitza Gueorguieva
Fellow
2025 - 2026
Resident
01.04.2021 - 30.04.2021
Literature
Biography
Elitza Gueorguieva (1982, Bulgaria) lives near Paris, where she devotes herself to documentary film, literature and stage performance. Her accent, oscillating between a singular gentleness and southern intonations – particularly on the words content and Pantin – permeates her writing, done directly in French. Her books include Odyssée des filles de l’Est (Prix Frontières 2025 ) and Les cosmonautes ne font que passer (Prix SGDL du premier roman / Prix Folio des lycéens de la région Centre/ sur les listes du Prix Flore), both published by Éditions Verticales (2016 and 2024). She directed the films Chaque mur est une porte (Cinéma du réel, 2017) and Notre endroit silencieux (Visions du réel, 2021), produced by Les Films du Bilboquet and widely distributed and awarded at various international competition festivals. In addition, she offers musical-comedy readings and lectures where she exhibits wandering images and words.
Project
His residency project is devoted to writing his next novel, which is partly inspired by his interview for French naturalization. During this interview, the employee at the Prefecture had given her one week to provide a certificate of attendance at work. Instead of complying, Elitza Gueorguieva immersed herself in the archives of a port city, where she discovered traces of a certain R.M., whose application for naturalization had been rejected in 1939. This discovery feeds a tragi-comic text structured around a central question: what is a “useful woman”?
At Villa Medici
See the complete program
The fellows
2025 - 2026
Open call fellows annual selection
Application 04.09 - 17.10.2025
Each year, the French Academy in Rome - Villa Medici organizes an international competition to select fellows who will be welcomed at the Villa Medici in Rome for a 12-month residency in creation, experimentation and research (residency begins in September, ends in August).