Remarkable works by experienced screenwriters and directors are awaiting their first meeting with the audience in Sofia.
The upcoming Sofia International Film Festival will offer a record number of documentary premieres in March. We present several of them below.
The Cruel Way is a documentary work dedicated to revealing and telling the whole truth about the unique, achievement-laden Bulgarian expedition to Everest in 1984. The film is directed by Deyan Bararev, with the script constructed by Elena Ermova, Stanislav Grozdanov, and Diliyan Pavlov. It is produced by Radoslav Spasov (who unfortunately did not live to see the film completed) and Ivan Spasov. Co-production is by BNT, and the film is supported by the Bulgarian National Film Center, National Cultural Fund, and BNR, with sponsorship from the cloud services provider “Prostor”. In this narrative, which features previously unreleased recordings of fateful radio communications, viewers will get an intimate look at the secrets of a great Bulgarian moment – the ascent of the highest peak on the planet – through the candid words of the main participants in the events. Hristo Prodanov, Ivan Valchev, Metodi Savov, Nikolay Petkov, and Kiril Doskov make an effort tantamount to madness as they attack Everest via the deadliest route, traveling entirely along the edge of the Western Ridge – a route that had never before been traversed and has never been again. This very route is known as “The Cruel Way”. This extremely dramatic endeavor highlights heroic deeds, self-denial, and mutual support, as well as fatal mistakes and crises in the relationships among the climbers that have remained hidden for more than forty years. Even to this day.
We Are All Children is a film by the directing duo Svetla Tsotsorkova and Svetoslav Ovcharov. Its main characters are the children, parents, and residents of the remote mountain village of Ravna Gora. The local school is attended by 76 children – more than half of whom are Roma, with the remainder being Bulgarians and Turks. In this village, pressed by unemployment and desolation, the school is an oasis of tolerance, knowledge, and kindness. However, it is threatened with closure since the minimum number of students required is 80…
Svetla Tsotsorkova and Svetoslav Ovcharov have previously collaborated on three fiction films together, and their film presented in 2023 at Sofia International Film Festival, Hero of Our Time, is their first joint documentary, for which they are both screenwriters and directors.
Uncompromising... in Solitude by the experienced documentarian Konstantin Zankov is a tale about the life of the artist Lubo Savinov, and his ongoing struggle—now, from the height of his 80-year-old wisdom—to uphold his right to a free spirit and to present his art as he understands it, outside the official postulates of communist party culture.
Many of the films shot by Konstantin Zankov have won national and international awards from prestigious festivals and international forums. Dreams' Hunters, Letters to the Underground, and Patience of the Stone have been acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, USA.
Ilia Kostov is the screenwriter, director, and producer of the new documentary film Death to the Author, Life to the Character, produced with the support of the Bulgarian National Film Center. It tells the story of Aleko Konstantinov’s place in Bulgaria’s cultural life and his active participation in the social and political processes at the end of the 19th century. His personal life and work are closely linked to the most dynamic epoch in Bulgarian history. His ideas have left an indelible mark on many of these processes, and they have retained their meaning and significance to this day. Proud and incorruptible, tragically penetrating with his humor into the essence of Bulgarian soul, having endured heavy losses and deep disappointments, “The Fortunate One” finds solace in immortality. This film is about the Hero who took the life of his Author, about the meaning of life and the courage to speak the truth aloud. Ilia Kostov is the screenwriter, director, and producer of dozens of narrative and documentary films that have won awards and participated in many festivals at home and abroad.
70 Years of Love, expressed in 437 letters, 30 paintings drawn on their envelopes, and spread across the world – all this forms the basis of the story recreated by four generations for whom “small things in life” do not exist. This is the story told by the film Letters to… and Back, by Hristo Dimitrov-Hindo, for which he is the screenwriter, cinematographer, and director, and co-author of the script and producer is Stanimir Petrov. Hindo himself defines himself as “once an adventurer, now a semi-hermit” who has a “cinema dream – to co-finance films made at one’s own risk.”
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