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Chalga is a Bulgarian feature film that is being successfully screened all over the country overcoming hits like Creed 3 and Shaza 2. The movie was shot entirely on the Samsung Galaxy Ultra 22 by veteran Dp Dimitar Gochev. Hence, Chalga is the first feature that was shot solely on a smartphone and screened on the big screen. This achievement can officially mark smartphones as filmmaking machines.

BTS of Chalga. Picture: Dp Dimitar Gochev Shot on a smartphone, screened at a movie theater

Lately, we see many cinematic projects that were shot on smartphones. Although it’s nice, most of the time it’s not more than a marketing trick, and without real intentions to bring those projects into real feature films screened in a movie theater. Top-notch directors and cinematographers are being recruited by smartphone companies, in order to convince the audience that those smartphones are filmmaking machines. Apple utilized Emanuel Lubezki,...

13 Bulgarian productions and co-productions are about to compete for the festival's awards. Thirteen features and 17 short films will screen in the official competition of the 37th edition of the Golden Rose Film Festival, a true who's who of Bulgarian cinema organised by the country's National Film Center. The competing features are Svetla Tsotsorkova's Sister (Bulgaria/Qatar), Lachezar Avramov's A Picture with Yuki (Bulgaria/Japan), Stanislav Donchev's Letters from Antarctica (Bulgaria), Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov's The Father (Bulgaria/Greece), Dragomir Sholev's The Pig (Bulgaria/Romania), Marian Valev's Bad Girl (Bulgaria), Borislav Mihailovski's Love, Boyden (Bulgaria), Stephan Komandarev's Rounds (Bulgaria/Serbia), Radoslav Iliev's Action (Bulgaria), Anri Koulev's Once Upon a War (Bulgaria/Monaco), Mina Mileva and Vesela Kazakova's Cat in the Wall (Bulgaria/UK/France), Iliya Kostov's A Travelling Cinema (Bulgaria) and one minority co-production, Mahmut Fazil Coşkun's The Announcement...

Are we done hating director Uwe Boll yet? Despite a spat of truly awful genre fare back in the early 2000s, the notorious German filmmaker has been on quite a role lately, delivering some of the best movies of his career. He's finally making what he really wants to make, and some of those films, like Rampage and Assault on Wall Street are truly inspired personal works that highlight his strengths as a visionary and storyteller. He has a distinct voice, and when the material fits, he's quite adept at bringing a powerful message to the screen.

This good work has leaked into his latest offering, despite it being a franchise sequel to one of his earlier groaners. 2009's In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale might not have registered very high with critics, but it truly capture the imagination of video game fans everywhere, and proved...