24/09/2026 - The Bulgarian first-time director reveals the real absurdist story behind his tender feature, and elaborates on the creative process of transferring life on screen

(© 2026 Dario Caruso for Cineuropa - @studio.photo.dar, Dario Caruso)

After a solid series of acclaimed shorts, Hristo Simeonov has just presented his feature debut, My Father’s Shoes, in the New Directors section of the San Sebastián International Film Festival. We sat down to discuss the dark humour present in the film as well as the ideas of memory and identity, and the actress playing the lead role, Valeria Varbanova, a new, fresh face in Bulgarian cinema.

Cineuropa: Your film is very dramatic, but with a touch of absurdist black humour. Was that intentional?
Hristo Simeonov: Yes, but I did not want to overemphasize it. It remains a small added element throughout. The absurdity was already in the story the screenplay is based on.

What was the real story?
A police detective friend told me about a case where they spent several days trying to identify a dead man. The story was simple: a man who is the husband of one woman and the father of another, but has been absent from their lives for twenty years, suddenly dies. When his body arrives at the morgue, no one is able to identify him, not having seen him for so long, plus the wife, who still deeply hates him, refuses to see him altogether. In the real case, the deceased remained unidentified and was buried with a name. Two months later, DNA testing showed it was actually him.

I first wrote it as a script for a short film before deciding to make it a feature. I kept changing the ending, but ultimately felt it was important that the daughter could close a chapter and move on. In a way, that also helps her relationship with her mother.

The father remains a very elusive figure but despite that, did you also feel sorry for him, being forgotten like that?
For me, the film is less about him personally and more about our attitude towards another person. Regardless of what someone has done, in the end, everyone deserves some respect. There is something about forgiving a person in death, and accepting them.

At the same time, we deliberately chose to not give any information about whether he tried to contact his daughter Mima or not after leaving. If it were the case and we knew it, her motivation to bury him would become much stronger, but it would also be much harder for her to forgive her mother for separating them.

She feels connected to him through music. Our memories, especially from childhood, really shape us as adults, and in her case the creative element, the music, is also part of her identity. This talent was passed through blood.

Why did you decide to shoot in the Rhodope Mountains and not in a city, for example?
The original story takes place in a small provincial town in north-western Bulgaria. I considered shooting in an urban environment, even in a peripheral neighbourhood of Sofia, but eventually, I felt that it would bring too much everyday context, make the place and the people in the film too specific.

I wanted the location to be there, but I did not want it to contextualise things too strongly. I found that in Ortsevo. The houses in the village have no fences, no clear boundaries, which provides some sense of freedom. The idea wasn’t for the characters to be connected to nature, I just needed a place bare enough for the story to remain at the centre.

Music is a key element in the film. Tell us about your choices for the soundtrack.
Once we decided that Mima would play folk music on a traditional instrument, it was only natural that we would start to look for something connected to the environment. People in this village are known for playing the accordion and preserving old melodies, but we couldn’t use actual Rhodope folklore because it wouldn’t have felt organic to these characters, so we created our own music. They are based on folk motifs, but they have a more universal sound.

Actually, in the beginning, we didn’t think we would have a soundtrack. We thought the live music in the film would be enough, but the process proved otherwise. Without the soundtrack, we couldn’t get under the main character’s skin as we do now.

How did you find Valeria Varbanova for the main role? She feels quite organic to the story.
Valeria had studied acting but before that, she graduated from a music school in folk singing, and one of our criteria was that the actress had to be musical, because she needed to learn to play the accordion.

Casting lasted about six months. When she came in first, we saw she could sing and play, but we also realised that she was a very talented actress. Having experienced loss herself, she understood what it meant to go through something like this. That was very important.

I am always open to improvisation and tend to encourage it. The dialogue was constantly changing, sometimes even during shooting, but we still stayed relatively close to the script.

What brings a male director to make a film centred almost entirely on women?
The only connection I can make is with my own memories. I was raised by my grandmother and my mother, together with my sisters. Although my father was always part of my life, I never felt that he was actively in it.

I still have to answer that question for myself, but in My Father’s Shoes, the mother, for example, is both a woman and a man. Men simply aren’t part of the equation.