In the City of Sylvia "In Review Online" named it the 2nd best film of 2008. Ignatiy Vishnevetsky of "The A.V. Club" described it as "something of a masterpiece." "En la Ciudad de Sylvia" was nominated for the 2007 Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, although the award was eventually presented to Ang Lee for "Lust, Caution". "En la Ciudad de Sylvia" won the 2008 Australian Film Critics Association award for the 'best unreleased film' in Australia at the time of the awards. Guerín won the best director award of the Premios ACE 2009 for this film. In the City of Sylvia In the
Songs of Life Festival by Bulgaria. When trains came to take 49,000 more Bulgarian Jews to the death camps, the Bulgarian people resisted the demands of the German government and refused to allow their Jewish neighbors to be sent to concentration camps in what was the single largest non-deportation of Jews during World War II. The Songs of Life Festival debuted in November 2008 on the 65th anniversary of the rescue in the Bulgarian cities of Sofia and Plovdiv and in Petah Tikva and Jerusalem in Israel. Ernest Bloch’s choral-orchestral piece, "Sacred Service", a Jewish work, was performed. During the inaugural festival, 49,000 flowers