28/09/2015 - Konstantin Bojanov’s new project is co-penned by Ida scriptwriter Rebecca Lenkiewicz

Five years after releasing his first feature, Avé [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Konstantin Bojanov
film profile], Konstantin Bojanov is shooting his new film, Light Thereafter [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile]. Written by Bojanov and Rebecca Lenkiewicz (Ida [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Pawel Pawlikowski
interview: Pawel Pawlikowski
film profile]), the film started shooting the week before last in London. Locations in Bulgaria and Belgium will be used until the end of the month, when the team will go back to London to wrap the production.

The film tells the story of Pawel (Barry Keoghan, ‘71 [+see also:
film review
trailer
Q&A: Yann Demange
film profile]), a second-generation immigrant and budding artist who lives with his mother in the UK. Although his mother pesters him to spend his holiday reconnecting with the family’s past in Bulgaria, Pawel wants to start looking for his idol, French painter Arnaud. It is the beginning of an extraordinary journey in this film described as a coming-of-age road movie.

“Light Thereafter is a story of obsession, and near blind worship, of one’s artistic idols,” says the director in a press release. “In some ways, it’s a reflection of my own difficult relationship with art. During my teenage years, art for me was a quasi-religious endeavour, a matter of life and death. Unable to relate to my peers, I sought spiritual guidance from the tortured souls of centuries past. At 16, I left art school to move to a remote village where an ascetic painter whom I greatly admired had once lived.”

The film is produced by Multifilm (Bulgaria), Film and Music Entertainment (UK) and Left Field Ventures (Belgium). Danish actors Thure Lindhardt (Flame & Citron [+see also:
trailer
film profile], The Island [+see also:
trailer
film profile]) and Kim Bodnia (The Bridge) play other important male characters, while the main female part went to French actress Solène Rigot (Puppy Love [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile]).

The international sales of Light Thereafter are handled by Madrid-based Latido Films.