Fear (2022)
Director: Ivaylo Hristov Run Time: 100 min. Rating: NR Release Year: 2022
Starring: Ivan Savov, Michael Flemming, Stoyan Bochev, Svetlana Yancheva
Country: Bulgaria
Language: Bulgarian, English
Presented at the Film Center and in our Virtual Screening Room
“Disarming, deadpan comedy of xenophobia and resistance… A perfect movie for the moment… reminiscent of bittersweet fish-out-of-water arthouse hits”
—Dennis Harvey for Variety
About the film:
Svetla, a strong-willed widow, has recently lost her job and lives alone in a small Bulgarian village close to the Turkish border. One day, while hunting in a forest, she encounters an African refugee, Bamba, who is trying to reach Germany. Reluctantly, she offers him hospitality, setting off a series of life-changing choices that go against her traditional community.
Ivaylo Hristov’s Fear was Bulgaria’s official submission for Best International Feature at the 94th Academy Awards.
About the filmmaker:
Born in 1955, Ivaylo Hristov is an actor and filmmaker from Sofia, Bulgaria who has won four Bulgarian Film Academy Awards. He graduated from the National Academy for Theatre and Film Arts in 1980, and has played more than 50 roles in theatre and more than twenty in feature films. He has directed 35 different plays. co-directed the award-winning Emigrants (2002), wrote and directed My Friends Call Me Uncle (2006), Footsteps in the Sand (2010), and Losers (2015). Hristov is an acting professor at the National Academy for Theatre and Film Arts in Sofia, an author of the book “The Actor in Cinema”, and one of the founders of the prestigious Bulgarian Theatre Awards, Askeer.