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A perfect movie for the moment — though it debuted in late 2020, winning the Grand Prize at Tallin Black Nights — “Fear” offers both seriocomic balm and finger-wagging just as another major refugee crisis roils the world. Bulgarian theater and film veteran Ivaylo Hristov’s latest feature brings to mind not just current Ukraine-related events, but wider European and global trends, as it depicts a border backwater rattled when a lonely local widow takes in an African man fleeing war. Selected as last year’s Bulgarian Oscar submission, this warmly ingratiating piece in cool widescreen monochrome is a keeper, reminiscent of bittersweet fish-out-of-water arthouse hits like “The Band’s Visit,” as well as select gems from Soviet-bloc nations’ 1960s new wave.

Flinty middle-aged widow Svetla (Svetlana Yancheva) is introduced closing up the classroom she’ll no longer be teaching in, as the entire school is being closed for lack of students. Indeed, everything...

"You can't fight the state." Film Movement has revealed an official US trailer for a Bulgarian B&W indie dark comedy titled Fear, made by a classic Bulgarian actor turned director named Ivaylo Hristov. This first premiered at the 2020 Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival a few years ago, and also played at the Santa Barbara Film Festival. It won the Jury Prize at the Kazan Festival of Muslim Cinema, an Audience Award at the Sofia Film Festival, plus Grand Prize in Tallinn. Svetla, a widow who lost her job recently is living next to the Bulgarian-Turkish border. There are many cases of refugees in her village due to it's location. One day she meets a refugee from Africa and this changes her life. It's a story about love, but also a story about fear. The film stars Svetlana Yancheva, Michael Flemming, Kristina Yaneva, and Ivan Savov. It is also Bulgaria's submission to the 2022 Academy Awards,...

Winner of the Best Film award in Tallinn Black Nights festival as well as Bulgaria’s official Oscar entry, Ivaylo Hristov’s fourth feature Fear is arriving in the U.S. next month courtesy of Film Movement and we’re pleased to debut the exclusive trailer. Mixing absurdity, comedy, and tragedy, the film––which debuts March 11 in Virtual Cinemas and on VOD––explores the fear of the outsider in a small-minded community.

Svetla (Svetlana Yancheva), a strong-willed widow, lives alone in a small Bulgarian village close to the Turkish border. She has recently lost her job as a teacher due to the lack of families with young children. One day, while hunting in a forest, she encounters an African refugee, Bamba (Michael Fleming), who is trying to reach Germany, and will bring about a dramatic turn in her life. Reluctantly, she offers him hospitality, but day after day, a bond...

Small-town Xenophobia Meets Absurdist Humor In Bulgaria’S Official Oscar Submission & Grand Prize Winner At Talinn Black Nights Premiering Via Virtual Cinema, VOD & Digital On March 11, 2022 Synopsis Svetla (Svetlana Yancheva), a strong-willed widow, lives alone in a small Bulgarian village close to the Turkish border. She has recently lost her job …

The post Small-Town Xenophobia Meets Absurdist Humor in Fear, Bulgaria’s Official Oscar Submission, Premiering via Virtual Cinema, VOD & Digital on 3/11 appeared first on Horror News | Hnn.

A young Iraqi refugee attempts to cross the dangerous border between Turkey and Bulgaria in “Europa,” a gripping drama that takes viewers as close as they would ever want to come to the real-life experiences of those willing to risk everything in the quest for safety and security. Using the conventions of a survivalist thriller to tell , Iraqi-Italian filmmaker Haider Rashid packs enormous punch into the lean running time. Following its debut in Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, “Europa” received limited release in Italy in September and is Iraq’s official submission in the Oscar international feature category.

Rashid uses almost no dialogue. Everything willing audiences need to know is laid out in opening text information stating that migrants attempting to enter Europe are routinely abused and intimidated by law enforcement officials and gangs of nationalist civilians calling themselves “Migrant Hunters.”

Carrying nothing but his passport, Kamal comes face to face with...

These are the submissions for the international film Oscar by country. The deadline for entries was Nov. 1. A shortlist of 15 films will be announced Dec. 21 and the nominations will come out Feb 8. The 94th Academy Awards will take place on March 27 at the Dolby Theatre. The Academy has not yet released a final list of entries; Variety compiled this list from individual country’s announcements.

Albania

Two Lions Heading to Venice

Dir. Jonid Jorji

Key cast: Vasjan Lami, Alessandra Bonarotta

Logline: A pair of filmmakers heading to the Venice festival are sidetracked from their destination after meeting two adult film actors.

Prodco: Bajo Films

Algeria

Heliopolis

Dir. Djaafar Gacem

Key cast: Souhila Mallem, Mehdi Ramdani, Cesar Duminil

Logline: True story of an uprising in the Algerian town of Guelma that was violently put down by the colonial French rulers.

Prodco: Hewes Pictures

Argentina

The Intruder

Dir. Natalia Meta

Key cast: Guillermo Arengo,...

The decision to select Ivaylo Hristov’s migrant drama Fear (Страх) as Bulgaria’s International Film submission for the 94th Academy Awards has sparked controversy in the Balkan country, triggering a slew of accusations, from an illegitimate vote to “systemic racism, sexism and denialism.”

The scandal erupted when animation filmmaker Theodore Ushev wrote a scathing Facebook post two days after Fear was announced as the country’s official selection. Ushev, who lives in Canada, is the most accomplished of the seven people on the selection committee; he is member of the American Film Academy as his animated short Blind Vaysha received an Oscar nomination in 2016.

Ushev questioned the integrity of the selection procedure which was supposed to involve a discussion among the seven committee members about the four movies that had gotten to the final stage, leading to a vote. He revealed that only five of the seven — him included...

Bulgaria has selected Ivaylo Hristov’s Fear (Страх) as its official submission for Best International Feature Film at the 94th Academy Awards. Set in a Bulgarian village close to the Turkish border, Fear centers on a widow (Svetlana Yancheva) who encounters an African migrant (Michael Fleming) while hunting in the woods. She takes him in while he plots the remainder of his journey to Germany. The drama with comedic elements examines themes of inherent prejudice and simmering bigotry as the entire village, bracing for a wave of Afghani migrants, turns against the woman, demanding that the man leave. (Watch the trailer below.)

Hristov, who was one of the top Bulgarian theater and film actors of the 1990s before venturing into filmmaking, wrote and directed Fear. The movie won the top Golden Rose Award for Best Film at the 38th Golden Rose Bulgarian Film Festival where it also won for Best...

Black and white Bulgarian drama to receive North American premiere at Santa Barbara Film Festival

Film Movement has snapped up North American rights from Films2C to Ivaylo Hristov’s 2020 Tallinn Black Nights grand prize winner Fear.

Svetlana Yancheva stars as a strong-willed widow in Bulgaria who enrages her village when she takes in an African refugee (Michael Fleming) who she finds in the woods while hunting.

The black and white Bulgarian drama will receive its North American premiere at Santa Barbara Film Festival in early April.

Film Movement president Michael Rosenberg negotiated the deal with Chantal Chauzy of Films2C.

Despite the writer/director's light touch, there's a depressing familiarity to the themes of Ivaylo Hristov's latest film, which is screening in competition in Tallinn. From In The Heat Of The Night and Blazing Saddles to Li'l Quinquin and Couscous, the list of movies tackling small-town racism is extensive and global. Cleverly, Hristov skewers the worst of this through absurdist humour, while also nudging his audience to think about the, perhaps less overt, ways they make value judgements about those they have never met.

In Bulgaria, somewhere near the Turkish border, the residents of a town have fixated their fears on the refugees who pass by and who are mostly hoping for a better life in Germany. Hristov goes beyond the basics, weaving a character study into this tale, as we meet Sveta (Svetlana Yancheva) a widow whose loneliness has just been made complete by the loss of her job in a school -.

As many as 19 films were competing for the awards of the 38th Golden Rose Film Festival in Varna, Bulgaria. The international jury has given its verdict, and the 2020 Golden Rose for Best Bulgarian Feature has gone to Ivaylo Hristov’s Fear, “for the skill to narrate ironically a story about daunting challenges”. Fear also earned Svetlana Yancheva the Best Actress Award: in the film, she plays a village school teacher who takes an African refugee under her wing, protecting him from the villagers’ xenophobia. The 38th Golden Rose showed an interesting trend in Bulgarian cinema: actors taking on directorial duties and making impressive features. Besides Ivaylo Hristov, who has been forging a strong directing career alongside his impressive acting filmography, actress Yana Titova won the Best First Feature Award for her independent film A Dose of Happiness, which explores the challenges of a young mother fighting a heroin addiction....

The black-and-white film shows the reactions of Bulgarian villagers when a black refugee enters their lives. Five years after his previous film, Losers, won several awards, including Moscow's Golden St George, Bulgarian actor-director Ivaylo Hristov is putting the finishing touches to his fourth directorial effort, Fear. The project, centring on the Bulgarian perspective on the migrant crisis, is being staged by ProFilm and producer Assen Vladimirov. Last week, Fear met an audience of festival selectors, salespeople and distributors at the 17th Sofia Meetings’ Works in Progress (held online from 27-31 May). The screenplay, written by Hristov himself, centres on Svetla (Svetlana Yancheva), a widow who has recently lost her job as a teacher. She lives in a Bulgarian village near the Turkish border, a spot where one can often see refugees on their way to Western Europe. One day, while hunting in the forest, Svetla comes across a migrant (Michael.

Svetla Tsotsorkova’s second feature film “Sister,” which played at the San Sebastian and London film festivals, has been picked up by Hualu in China and Tamasa in France. World sales are handled by Xavier Henry-Rashid’s Film Republic.

The film, set in a small town in present-day Bulgaria, centers on a mother and her two daughters, who are struggling to survive. The dreamy and distracted younger daughter often invents stories in order to make life more interesting. Unwittingly, she eventually gets caught in the trap of her own lies and destroys her older sister’s well-ordered materialistic world. While struggling to get to the truth, the two sisters find out the truth about their mother.

The film was written and produced by Svetoslav Ovcharov and Tsotsorkova for Omega Films in Bulgaria, and was supported by the Doha Film Institute. It stars Monika Naydenova, Svetlana Yancheva, Elena Zamyarkova and Assen Blatechky.

Madrid — London-based Film Republic has swooped on world rights to Bulgaria’s Svetla Tsotsorkova’s second feature, “Sister,” set to world premiere at the San Sebastian Film Festival in its prestigious New Directors competition for first and second features.

Also playing New Directors, Tsotsorkova’s feature debut, 2015’s ”Thirst,” a character-driven coming of age tale with a strong sense of rural place, also bowed in New Directors, sparking upbeat reviews which established Tsotsorkova as a director to track.

“Rarely does a debut feature come along with the visual and narrative confidence of ‘Thirst,’ a beautifully crafted, subtly told story of two very different teens hesitantly coming together in Bulgaria’s rural southwest,” Jay Weissberg write in his Variety review.

Off the back of strong reviews, “Thirst” sold 15 territories for sales gent Alpha Violet and garnered strong festival play and prizes.

Produced and co-written by Tsotsorkova and Svetoslav Ovcharov, also the producer of “Thirst,...

Thirst

Directed by Svetla Tsotsorkova

Written by Svetoslav Ovtcharov, Svetla Tsotsorkova, and Ventsislav Vasilev

Bulgaria, 2015

Thirst, Bulgarian actress Svetla Tsotsorkova’s feature debut just premiered in the New Directors section at the San Sebastian Film Festival and is currently screening at the Haifa International Film Festival. It stars teenage newcomers Monika Naydenova and Alexander Benev alongside Bulgarian screen and theatre veterans Vasil Mihailov, Ivaylo Hristov, Svetla Yancheva and Stefan Mavrodiev.

Thirst is a minimalist countryside drama set in rural southwest Bulgaria, in a region affected by chronic summer drought where a nameless family of three urban transplants, a teenage son (Alxander Benev), a father living with the aftereffects of two heart attacks (Ivaylo Hristov) and a mother who supports the family as a laundry contractor for the region’s hotels, live in a hilltop house overlooking a mountain valley. The drought affecting the area renders the laundry business unreliable and...

After a string of announcements, it looks like the Toronto International Film Festival have locked down their line-up and it’s looking like a fantastic slate. Much of the additions today come in the form of previous Cannes premieres, including Michael Haneke‘s Amour (review), Cristian Mungiu‘s Beyond the Hills (review), Abbas Kiarostami‘s Like Someone in Love (review), Bernardo Bertolucci‘s Me and You (review), Hong Sang-soo‘s In Another Country and the Venice premiere Olivier Assayas‘ Something in the Air. Most notably missing is Leos Carax‘s Holy Motors, but we do get a new Michael Winterbottom film titled Everyday. Out of the Discovery section, the biggest film seems to be The Brass Teapot, and indie drama starring Juno Temple and Michael Angarano and one can check out all the additions below.

Masters

Amour Michael Haneke, Austria/France/Germany North American Premiere Screen legends Jean-Louis Trintignant and...