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Lazarov’s previous film Aga closed the Berlinale in 2018, playing out of competition

Berlin-based Films Boutique has taken on sales for Bulgarian director Milko Lazarov’sTarika.

Lazarov’s previous film Aga closed the Berlinale in 2018, playing out of competition and was selected as the Bulgarian entry for the Oscars. His debut, 2013’s Alienation, played in Venice’s Giornate Degli Autori.

Shot on 35mm, the film centres on a young girl living with her father and her grandmother in a small hut near the border far away from the local village. Marked by her “butterfly wings”, a rare bone condition she inherited from her mother,...

The lessons learned in this pitch-black German-Bulgarian co-production are very grim indeed, a social-realist drama that takes an unexpectedly shocking turn at its harrowing climax. The film’s recent win at Karlovy Vary, where it took the Grand Prix in the Crystal Globe Competition, should give it a welcome boost on the arthouse circuit, but the unwary are warned that Stephan Komandarev’s latest feature packs a punch not seen since Lars von Trier or Michael Haneke in their provocative prime.

Blaga (Eli Skorcheva) is a widow, grieving after the recent death of her beloved husband Hristo, a former policeman. After saving up, she plans to buy a plot of land to bury him in, 40 days after his passing, with a custom-made double gravestone for them both. Hristo “believed in Lenin more than Jesus,” but Blaga’s desire to substitute a cross for a red star is expressly forbidden in Bulgarian law.

The film, currently being shot in Valencia, stars Spanish actors such as Karra Elejalde, Susi Sánchez and Alexandra Jiménez alongside Bulgarian thesps like Ivan Barnev. On 1 February, the shoot kicked off in Valencia for Vasil, the feature debut by Avelina Prat, starring Bulgaria’s Ivan Barnev (The Father), Spaniards Karra Elejalde (While at War), Alexandra Jiménez (Distances) and Susi Sánchez (Sunday’s Illness), and Brit Sue Flack (The Year of the Plague). The movie tells the story of the titular immigrant, a peculiar man who radiates kindness, passion and a bizarre kind of wisdom: he looks at life differently... This story depicts the two months that he spends in Spain, through four characters who accompany him. The main topics tackled by this feature are immigration and the welcome offered to refugees, but it will also prompt reflection on how difficult it is to connect with others and how relating to other.

Tragedy is punctured by comedy from the start of The Father. At a funeral in rural Bulgaria, mourners prepare to say goodbye to Valentina as the priest delivers an elegy over her grave. Suddenly, a cellphone starts ringing with the sound of a beeping frog — it belongs to Valentina’s son, Pavel (Ivan Barnev). As the open coffin is lowered into the ground, Pavel’s elderly father, Vassil (Ivan Savov), demands that his son take a picture of the corpse with his camera. Initially, the son refuses, causing a mild scene. This sets the tone for a film that juxtaposes trivial obsessions with macabre matters, set amid a strained father-son relationship. The effect is gently comic, though it strays into poignant territory in the film’s affecting conclusion.

Filmmakers Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov formed Abraxas Film to produce work that’s “equal parts amusing, upsetting and touching.

Ivan Barnev discusses acting and his role in ‘The Father’, winner of the Grand Prix Crystal Globe Prize of US$ 25,000 at Karlovy Vary Ff.

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Maria Bakalova landed the role of a lifetime when she was just a young, aspiring actress in Bulgaria. And it wasn’t for “Borat 2.”

She was cast in Bulgaria’s Oscar submission “The Father” in a tiny but important role, and in speaking with TheWrap, Bakalova described her casting as something of a dream come true.

“They are actually my real teachers, so to work with them was my biggest dream to be part of their movies,” Bakalova told TheWrap’s Steve Pond of “The Father” directors Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov. “I was praying one day to be part of something that they were going to make…When I heard back from them that I could be part of it, I was like ‘Jesus Christ this is the best day of my life!'”

Though she broke out this year and is even earning Oscar buzz for “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm,...

Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov win the Golden Atlas. The Silver Atlas goes to Marko Skop for Let There Be Light and the Audience Award goes to Federico Bondi’s Dafne. The competition jury of the 20th Arras Film Festival, chaired by French filmmaker Thierry Klifa, has bestowed the Golden Atlas - Grand Jury Prize upon The Father by Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov. Already crowned Best Film at Karlovy Vary and screened in Toronto, the third feature from the Bulgarian duo, after The Lesson and Glory, has also won in Arras the Critics’ Award and the Youth Jury Award. Written by the two directors with their usual partner Decho Taralezkov, the tender and hilarious film recounts the misadventures of a son (Ivan Barnev) trying his best to desperately contain the whims of his father (Ivan Savov) following the death of his mother. Produced by Bulgarian company Abraxas and co-produced by.

Barcelona-based studio Filmax has acquired international sales rights to Avelina Prat’s feature-debut “Vasil,” which is currently in pre-production. Filmax also handles Spanish distribution.

“Vasil” is produced by Barcelona-based Distinto Films, which backed Patricia Ferreira’s “The Wild Children,” in co-production with Bulgaria’s Activist 38, which made Mina Mileva and Vesela Kazakova’s “Cat in the Wall.”

“This new Distinto Films’ project tackles very contemporary European issues , with a very personal and deep insight into the story’s characters,” said Filmax CEO Carlos Fernández.

Inspired by the director’s own experiences, the feature follows Vasil, a chess and bridge champion arriving in Spain from Bulgaria. He meets Maureen, an Irish woman who decides to help him, Yorgos, a Greek who gives him work; and Alfredo, who offers his sofa as a temporary home.

Principal photography is scheduled from May in Valencia and Barcelona.

Ivan Barnev, a best actor winner...

Rounds, The Pig, Sister and Cat in the Wall were also among the winners of this year’s edition. After winning the Crystal Globe at this year's Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov's The Father has picked up several awards at the 37th edition of the Golden Rose Film Festival, including Best Film, Best Screenplay and Best Actor (for Ivan Barnev and Ivan Savov). With one exception, all of the awards and Special Mentions were given to films that have already been seen at international film festivals, such as Stephan Komandarev’s Rounds, Dragomir Sholev’s The Pig, Svetla Tsotsorkova’s Sister, and Mina Mileva and Vesela Kazakova’s Cat in the Wall. The international jury was led by Bulgarian director Milko Lazarov. Thirteen features and 17 short films competed at this edition of the festival, which was organised by the country's National Film Center. Many of.

Having breakfast in the special El Gouna Film Festival atmosphere of friendliness and open discussions with new acquaintances, I began an interesting conversation with the Bulgarian actor Ivan Barnev the costar (with Ivan Savov) of ‘The Father’.

I had seen his film The Father already and though actors are far from my area of expertise as my experience stems from the business of films and not from production, we discussed acting and his part in The Father, the winner of the Grand Prix Crystal Globe Prize of Us$ 25,000 at Karlovy Vary, the top Eastern European Film Festival, which was for many years my favorite film festival.

The Father is an intimate family comedy about the difficulties of connecting with those close to us. Told with an “Eastern European” accent and in the particularly droll style of the Bulgarian filmmaking duo Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov, the story opens at a funeral.

Five features (plus a scattering of documentaries) into his career, leading Bulgarian writer-director Stephan Komandarev has resisted cultivating a clear thematic or stylistic throughline to his oeuvre. Yet his latest, the overnight police patchwork “Rounds,” feels surprisingly close to quintessential, pulling as it does plot points, structural models and tonal switches from his previous films into one stacked crowdpleaser. Alternately wry and solemn as it follows three pairs of police officers through an eventful night’s patrol in central Sofia, “Rounds” unites several splintered mini-narratives about human trafficking, euthanasia and institutional corruption — among other hot-button topics — more cohesively and engrossingly than you might expect in its 106-minute runtime, though there’s as much soap as there is grit in the final mix.

A palpable hit with audiences upon its premiere at the Sarajevo Film Festival — where it scooped the Cineuropa Award, as well as the Best Actress jury prize for...

Winners include Bulgarian-Greek comedy ‘The Father’ and Jan-Ole Gerster’s ‘Lara’.

Bulgarian-Greek comedy The Father won the Grand Prix - Crystal Globe at the 54th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (June 28 – July 6), which closed yesterday with its annual awards ceremony.

Scroll down for full list of winners

Directed by Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov, The Father was selected by grand jury comprising Annemarie Jacir, Štěpán Hulík, Sergei Loznitsa, Angeliki Papoulia and Charles Tesson. The Crystal Globe comes with $25,000 prize money.

The film tells the story of a middle-aged man (Ivan Barnev) attempting to stop his widowed...

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade, the sunny proverb goes. But what if life gives you inedibly sour quinces instead? The father-son odd-couple road trip comedy gets an appealingly deadpan, Bulgarian makeover in Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov’s third feature, a film that takes the bittersweet fruits of its funny, sad, silly situations, and eventually, after many a comical false start, makes jam.

Not all filmmakers can say they’ve carved out a distinctive niche for themselves after just three features, but the Bulgarian writing-producing-directing duo are among the few who can. So while “The Father” occupies a lighter, gentler register than jet-black fables “The Lesson” and “Glory,” it shows the same affinity for screw-tightening stories of fundamentally decent people caught in an escalating series of thankless dilemmas, through no malicious intent of their own. In the Grozeva/Valchanov Cinematic Universe, no good deed goes unpunished, but this...

Writer-director duo Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov are two of Bulgaria’s most acclaimed filmmakers, earning critical plaudits with their award-winning features “The Lesson” (2014) and “Glory” (2016). Part of their Newspaper Clippings Trilogy, the films were inspired by sensationalist media stories depicting the absurdity of life in post-communist Bulgaria.

Grozeva and Valchanov took a break from the trilogy to shoot their latest feature, “The Father,” which has its world premiere Tuesday in competition at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival. Inspired by a mysterious, real-life event, the film follows a bereaved husband and son who discover that the deceased has been persistently calling a neighbor’s phone since her passing. When Vassil (Ivan Savov) decides to visit a famous medium to unravel the supernatural mystery, his estranged son Pavel (Ivan Barnev) is forced to tag along to keep him out of trouble — a tragicomic road trip that could ultimately bring the distant duo closer together.

Someone has just stolen my wallet.

When a student's wallet is stolen, English teacher Nade (Margita Gosheva) takes the matter very seriously, using all her rhetorical skills to guilt the culprit into a confession. No one confesses. It weighs on her and she vows to teach the little thief a lesson. Things at home are pretty rocky as well. Her husband Mladen (Ivan Barnev), while a caring father, has a problem with alcohol and money. When the creditors threaten to take the house, Nade has to scramble to get the money together. She tries to shake down a deadbeat boss who has yet to pay her for her translation work. She takes out loans. She tries to get some money from her estranged father. At every turn, something goes wrong and Nade is living every moment on the edge of personal disaster. The impunity of that little thief looms larger and larger in her mind.

One of last year's the most under-distributed and underseen major European imports, Jirí Menzel's "I Served the King of England" (2006) is lovely, silly, damnable antique, willfully pre-feminist and hopelessly out of fashion. The film, after all, dares to etch out Czech life under the Nazi occupation as preposterous farce, and it hardly halts there in favoring live-it-up hedonism over the grim realities of history. Menzel and his famous co-writer Bohumil Hrabal (who was enough of an institution to warrant a detour for a visiting President Clinton in 1994, and the two hit the local public house for a beer) had been through the Germans, Communist rule and the Soviet invasion, and it's difficult to argue that they haven't earned their esprit -- their two best films, "Closely Watched Trains" (1966) and "Larks on a String" (1990), similarly, and with exhilarating perverseness, portray oppression as absurd comedy, insisting that totalitarianism in all its forms is no match,...

Movie Jungle is pleased to provide you with a chance to win a copy of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment's "I Served the King of England" on DVD! The film is a winner of the Fipresci Prize at the 2007 Berlin Film Festival as well as a nominee of the Golden Berlin Bear.   The romantic comedy war film stars Ivan Barnev, Oldrich Kaiser, Julia Jentsch, Martin Huba, Marián Labuda and Milan Lasica.   Jirí Menzel, helmer of "Larks on a String" and "The Beggar's Opera," directs the film as well as adapting from the novel by Bohumil Hrabal.   What's it about?    Dreaming of becoming a millionaire, a short but ambitious Czech works his way into a posh pre-war luxury spa, where his marriage to a Hitler-loving fräulein provides him with a golden opportunity to make his fondest wish come true.   Enter now!      ...

Movie Jungle is pleased to provide you with a chance to win a copy of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment's "I Served the King of England" on DVD! The film is a winner of the Fipresci Prize at the 2007 Berlin Film Festival as well as a nominee of the Golden Berlin Bear. The romantic comedy war film stars Ivan Barnev, Oldrich Kaiser, Julia Jentsch, Martin Huba, Marián Labuda and Milan Lasica. Jirí Menzel, helmer of "Larks on a String" and "The Beggar's Opera," directs the film as well as adapting from the novel by Bohumil Hrabal...

Movie Jungle is pleased to provide you with a chance to win a copy of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment's "I Served the King of England" on DVD! The film is a winner of the Fipresci Prize at the 2007 Berlin Film Festival as well as a nominee of the Golden Berlin Bear. The romantic comedy war film stars Ivan Barnev, Oldrich Kaiser, Julia Jentsch, Martin Huba, Marián Labuda and Milan Lasica. Jirí Menzel, helmer of "Larks on a String" and "The Beggar's Opera," directs the film as well as adapting from the novel by Bohumil Hrabal...

Take one renegade Japanese director, set him to work on a Spaghetti Western, add a cameo by a talkative American filmmaker, and what do you get? First place in the indie four-day weekend box office race. Sukiyaki Western Django, directed by the prolific and extremely versatile Takashi Miike and featuring Quentin Tarantino in a small role, tore it up at the single Manhattan theatre where it opened, grossing $13,100, according to estimates compiled by Box Office Mojo. The version released in the Us does not represent Miike's original vision, however. Distributor First Look edited 20 or so minutes for the bastardized edition currently playing, so this is a muted triumph. *

The light-hearted I Served the King of England had the right stuff to average $8,487 per screen at eight locations. Directed by Jirí Menzel, the film stars Ivan Barnev, Oldrich Kaiser, and the always wonderful Julia Jentsch. Naked Penélope Cruz outdrew mostly-clothed Penélope Cruz,...

By Neil Pedley

This week finds Shakespeare meeting Sexy Jesus, a crash course in Czech history alongside a totalitarian demolition derby, apocalyptic sea monsters and Fred Durst trying to get in touch with his fuzzy side.

"Cthulhu"

Director Dan Gildark certainly isn't lacking for confidence. Whereas most first-time filmmakers would turn to the well-worn territory of twentysomethings and their quirky quarterlife crises for subject matter, Gildark has opted to tackle H.P Lovecraft's sprawling, heady, quasi-religious mythos from the short story "Shadow over Innsmouth" instead. Jason Cottle stars as Russ, a history professor who returns home to Oregon to execute his late mother's will and discovers his father is the leader of the coastal town's apocalyptic cult that centers on the fabled Cthulhu, an extraterrestrial deity that exists in a state of torpor at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. When Russ learns a mass sacrifice may be in the offing,...

• I don't see them as comeback kids, but rather, old school folk churning out the occasional gem and still knowing their ways about the process. Filmmaking is not like learning how to ride a bike. Just ask Wim Wenders. With a lot less frequency than a Woody Allen or a Jacques Rivette, the director behind 1966's Closely Watched Trains, was recently cited for his skill with a Best Foreign film nomination. Sony Pictures Classics has got Jirí Menzel's I Served the King of England on tap for a mid August release. We have the large poster below. Based on a picaresque novel by Czech novelist Bohumil Hrabal, this is the burlesque rise and fall of an apprentice waiter in Prague during the first half of the last century. Jan Dítě (Ivan Barnev) is short in height, but high in ambition. To put it bluntly, the young provincial waiter wants to become a millionaire.

...

BERLIN -- Forty years after their "Closely Watched Trains" won the Oscar for best foreign-language film, director Jiri Menzel has adapted another novel by the late Bohumil Hrabal, and history could well repeat itself when Academy members get to see "I Served the King of England", which screened here In Competition.

Sharing a similar sensibility, the new picture is the picaresque tale of an ambitious but naive Czechoslovakian waiter whose gumption, opportunism and blinkered awareness of events see him thrive amid political and social upheaval. It is a sumptuously told tale of childlike wonder in the face of darkest corruption and war, mixing high comedy, surreal sequences and genuine drama viewed from a wise, jaundiced perspective.

Given time to finds its audience, which is anyone who likes the Coen brothers, "Served" could do well across all territories as its visual humor and topical significance give it mainstream grown-up appeal.

The film begins with a grizzled, aging Jan Dite (Oldrich Kaiser) being released after 15 years in a Czech prison and assigned to a job as a roadman near the German border. He's given a wrecked building to live in, and as he works cheerfully to rebuild it, flashbacks tell how the fates have conspired to bring him to this pretty pass.

As a young man, Jan (Ivan Barnev) is short, observant and quick-witted, selling frankfurters to passengers on briefly stopped trains. In the first comic sequence -- which is shot like a silent film and will be echoed throughout "Serve" -- he hangs on to a large amount of change until the train pulls out, taking the buyer with it. His innate innocence surfaces too late, and he chases the train with arm outstretched to return the cash, but to no avail.

The film switches back and forth from Jan's adventures as a young man to his later life, where his remote existence is brightened by the appearance of a lethargic but attractive young woman, Marcela (Zuzana Fialova), accompanied by a professor (Milan Lasica) seeking wood to make violins and cellos.

Young Jan makes his way from one waiting job to a better one, and these hotel and restaurant scenes are wonderfully contrived with visual comedy matched by undercurrents of shrewd political comment. In one of the cleverest, the film's title is explained. Hrabal and Menzel employ satire with the sharpest scalpel exercised within comic episodes of high wit and slapstick.

Jan's young life is full of delectably willing young women, though they are usually at the beck and call of salacious capitalists. When he falls in love, it's with a young German woman, Liza (Julia Jentsch), who believes in all things Aryan and supports the Nazi invasion.

The story then follows their passage through World War II and later the Soviet communist occupation and how Jan gets everything he wishes for and then loses it all. Barnev is sublime as the young man, gifted with the physical grace of great comedians and with expressive features that encourage sympathy despite some of the unsympathetic things he does. Kaiser is equally good as the wiser, sadder older man.

The acting throughout is of the highest order, and other standout credits include the colorful production design by Milan Bycek and Ales Brezina's jaunty piano score.

I SERVED THE KING OF ENGLAND

Bioscop and AQS in co-production with TV Nova, Magic Box Slovakia, Barrandov Studios, Universal Production Partners

Credits:

Director-screenwriter: Jiri Menzel

Based on the novel by: Bohumil Hrabal

Producers: Robert Schaffer, Andrea Metcalfe

Director of photgraphy: Jaromir Sofr

Editor: Jiri Brozek

Production designer: Milan Bycek

Music: Ales Brezina

Costume designer: Milan Corba

Cast:

Jan Dite (young): Ivan Barnev

Jan Dite (old): Oldrich Kaiser

Liza: Julia Jentsch

Skrivanek: Martin Huba

Walden: Marian Labuda

Professor: Milan Lasica

Brandejs: Josef Abrham

Hotel Chief: Jiri Labus

Karel: Jaromir Dulava

Marcela: Zuzana Fialova

General: Pavel Novy

Running time -- 120 minutes

No MPAA rating...