31/03/2011

Ilian Djevelekov’s Love.net, a new Bulgarian movie with hopes of becoming a box office hit, will open this week in Sofia and other cities throughout the country. Starring top local actors Hristo Shopov, Vladimir Penev, Zahari Baharov, Lilia Maraviglia, Koyna Ruseva and Diana Dobreva, the film tells several interconnected stories about online dating.

According to Bulgarian news agency Novinite, the film is also the first appearance on the silver screen of British rock and roll and blues vocalist John Lawton, known for his work with Lucifer's Friend, Uriah Heep and the Les Humphries Singers.

Under the tagline "Love at first virtual sight", Love.net follows the parallel stories of a number of characters who are trying to change their lives via the Internet or are simply having fun online, says the first-time director known for producing Javor Gardev's Zift [+see also:
trailer
film profile], a domestic success in 2008. The Miramar Film (Zift) production received a grant of over €500,000 from the Bulgarian National Film Centre in 2007.

The screenwriting team of Ilian Djevelekov, Matey Konstantinov and Nelly Dimitrova contacted the owners of the largest Bulgarian dating website, asking its users to submit their most interesting stories of online dating. They used several of the over 7,000 stories submitted for the final script.

Shooting took place in 2009 and 2010 in Sofia and the UK.

Love.net is expected to be a box office hit at home, where local comedies are enthusiastically welcomed. Last year, Mission London, the feature debut of Dimitar Mitovski, produced by SIA Advertising, was released domestically to great success. In 22 weeks the comedy about the extreme misadventures of the new Bulgarian ambassador to London had as many as 372,000 admissions, and was the second most successful release of 2010 after Avatar (circa 473,000 admissions).