2017 - While writing this book I am working as a programmer and film selector for the low and no budget films for the 8th So Independent Film Festival in Sofia. We've received more than 100 films. I am trying to watch every one of them as much as I can. However it's more than 90 hours of content. It's not a paid job, it is a work which I am doing pro-bono as a favor to the film festival founder Jana Karaivanova.
In the meantime I've got my day to day tasks, I am writing this ebook, I am writing my application documents for the TV Drama series which I am developing at the moment and I am finishing a deal with HBO. I've got a family and a three year son who requires extra time and attention. I am doing daily yoga early morning practise and I'm boxing or running in the afternoon.
Why I am telling you all of this? I just wanted to emphasize that I am a busy man like you and I don't have time to waste watching bull shits, bad quality films, pointless shorts and even worse amateur bad executed meaningless feature films.
And if a man who loves filmmaking and who appreciates the no budget and low budget aspects of it, might be so rude, imagine how rude and rough a film festival programmer might be, because he or she receives thousands of submissions every year. I am walking inside the shoes of a programmer and film selector and I've been in the shoes of an independent micro budget filmmaker so I've got a kind of complete experience being from both sides. I'd like to say that in this chapter I'm going to speak mostly about the biggest film festivals in the world and what was our experience trying to break into some of them.
There is a huge difference between the top twenty film festivals in the world and the other thousands of film festivals. We chose to try to get into one of the biggest in the world. I was notified from Val Todorov that it is absurd to try cold calling( to send the movie without somebody to back up the title, or lobby about it, or to be sent by yourself and not by sales agents or film distributors) to break into one of them. Nobody will watch it brother, were the exact words of Val. I believed that simple because every year there are thousands of films submitted to the biggest film festivals. However I submitted NoOne to around fifteen film festivals which were taking place in 2016. Parallel to that I was trying to find a sales agent or distributor who eventually to represent the film for the festivals.
We participated in Sofia International Film Festival in 2016 in their work in progress section where we showed 30 minutes of the film in front of international film festival programmers, sales agents, distributors. We showed the first 30 minutes of the film, later on I regret this because for this kind of occasion it's better to showcase the entire film with its beginning, middle and end by ten minutes each. I made some great contacts with people who were attending the projections. I got to know Keiko from Alpha Violet and Ioana Stais from Heretic both are sales agents which wanted to watch the entire film.
Unfortunately after seeing it they weren't ready to take it in their portfolios of films for 2016/2017. Both liked the film but they didn't find it as compelling a festival title as others which later on they took under their management.
I got a nice connection with Karlovy Vary programmer Lenka Tyrpáková. I got introduced by Keiko Funato to Lenka and Keiko very kindly recommended NoOne to her. Eventually we were shortlisted for the international competition for Karlovy Vary 2016 but still we weren't selected.
I have to clarify one thing too. NoOne is a title coming from a very small country like Bulgaria. In 2016 there were two other films which were selected in the major international film festivals – Godless and Hristo. NoOne was competing with them for any entrance and any film festival. Both of the films were exploring the harsh reality in Bulgaria. I criticized Godless very aggressively during Sofia IFF during the press-conference about the new wave in Bulgarian cinema and despite being awarded with Golden Leopard from Locarno and at least thirty more awards, for me it was a boring and twisted representation of the Bulgarian grim reality. Very speculative and manipulative filmmaking which was delivering exactly what the west european film festivals and audience expect from Bulgaria – misery portrayed as pseudo social realism, under the mask of poetic magical realism.
In August 2016 we were invited to attended the 21 International Film Festival “Love Is Folly” in Varna, where we won the award for leading actress shared by Gergana Pletnyova and Silvia Petkova. We spent a great time and I met some nice people from which I found out lots of very useful information about how the film festivals work. As I 've said before, not always the best films win and even are selected.
Ironically in March 2017 we attended SIFF where we screened the film in Sunday from 16:00 but after us was the Bulgarian premiere of Godless from 18:00, it was screened in a different cinema far away from ours, so the audience basically had to choose what to watch between our film or to go and attend the premiere of the most awarded film in Bulgarian cinema history. Despite this absurd festival programming, we managed to sell out the cinema again and around 500 people saw the film. However, I experienced another bizarre story dealing with the film festivals. We spent one month writing emails back and forth with the founder of the film festival Mr.Kitanov who didn't want to pay us the 50% of the sold tickets, despite the fact that his film festival had a contract with our local distributor for 50% from the amount of the sold tickets. We decided to give up and thus we left with empty hands but we were not willing to get from them only 25% of the amount, so Kitanov get our 50% from a fully sold out screening, for which the SIFF did everything possible by programming it in this day and time to compromise its attendance.
What I felt is that it is extremely crucial for the success of the film in the biggest film festivals not to be Underneath The Radar. By saying the film I mean either its actors or directors, or producers, at least somebody or something has to be on the radar, they have to be well known or to know well the decision makers. For the small film festivals I guess there is still a certain chance for a random film to be selected if the film has been sent by an unknown filmmaker, but nowadays the chance is not big at all.
Film festivals are big schemes and politics, they are great circuses and place for a nice excuse to have a reason to party. If you have a boring life go and attend film festivals, but I guess there are much more interesting things to do out there in real life.
UPDATES 2020
We decided to skip the film festivals and release Yatagan directly in cinemas on 20.02.2020.
When the world wide Lockdown happened because of Covid -19, everything turned upside down.
However, I think that more and more films will be looking to go straight to TVOD or SVOD and be immediately available for the audiences world wide after their completion.
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