Bulgarian director Kostadin Bonev is currently in post-production with his fourth fiction feature, Wolves Around Us (working title). The theatre drama is being produced by Bonev through his production company, Trivium Film, and is expected to be ready next June.

The screenplay, written by Nikola Petkov, Evgeny Kuzmanov and Bonev, centres on Zlati Bratoev (Penko Gospodinov), a theatre director banished from Sofia during the communist regime. After moving to a small, provincial theatre, the director starts staging a new play by a young Bulgarian writer, a piece about people who are constantly being watched and are living in constant fear of punishment. Gradually, the nightmarish events depicted in the play become reality for the director and the actors.

The film’s budget amounts to a little over €800,000. The Bulgarian National Film Center helped the production out with a grant of €521,000. The film’s shoot started last October in the cities of Yambol and Burgas, and finished in November. The movie’s DoPs are Konstantin Zankov and Orlin Ruevski. Other important characters are played by Stefan Valdobrev, Yoanna Boukovska-Davidova, Joreta Nikolova and Tzvetana Maneva. 

Asked whether his film set in the past also comments on the present, Bonev says, “In cinema, there are no such concepts as ‘past – present – future’. In cinema, everything is ‘here and now’. When in some of my films I tell a story that happened 30 or 40 years ago, I do it only because in that film I see things happening around me – now, today.” He also says that he expects the movie’s audience to be familiar with “the fear of being observed; the fear that somewhere, somebody is collecting information about you and your relatives; the fact that you do not have any privacy.” 

Bonev says he plans to release Wolves Around Us domestically this autumn, with a first national screening most likely as part of the selection of the 36^th Golden Rose Film Festival (which unspools at the end of September). Currently there is no distributor attached to the project.