Sofia International Film Festival

Today Sneakers, the feature debut of the directing duo Valeri Yordanov and Ivan Vladimirov, will be screened at the Moscow Film Festival where it was selected in the competition programme. As we mentioned before, the film was presented as a project in development at Sofia Meetings, it then traveled to the renowned Moscow and Karlovy Vary festivals, before making its premiere in front of Bulgarian audiences.
 

In Sneakers, six young people are running far away from their failures in life and from the city aggression to the seaside. They are running from their letdowns with family, love, money, ambitions and their encounters with those who are different from them. A hidden shore will bring them together and make them re-discover their hopes. 
 
The main roles in Sneakers are played by Filip Avramov, Ivan Burnev, Valeri Yordanov, Vasil Draganov, Ivo Arukov and Ina Nikolova, whom we are about to introduce you to.
 
Ina Nikolova is currently working on her dissertation in animation at New Bulgarian Univesity, but apart from that she is also involved in “3 million other things, every other painter is involved with”. Although her first performance as an actress is in Sneakers, her experiences in cinema include design and animation work on various films. She says that this is completely normal as “most young people go through many different things before deciding what they want to do in life. And things change a lot with time.“
 
In March together with Rayna Atanasova as a team BUSTAN she won the Film Challenge Sofia Short Challenge within the 15-th Sofia Film Festival in the category animation with the short film Chromones.
 
- How did the work with Sneakers start?

I’ve known Valeri  for years. We met in the restaurant “Oh! Shipka” when we were in 10 or 11 grade. He shared with me the idea of Ketsove, he even told me that I was the girl from the story but I laughed at him saying that I was not an actress and that I wanted to study art. 6-7 years passed and one day he called me with the words: “Little, we are approved, we will make a film. Come for the casting”. He wanted me to make an attempt and there was really a very serious casting. We argued a lot before I came because I didn’t think I was up to it. But on the other hand I realized that it would be pity if I didn’t try. And then the things happened so rapidly that I didn’t notice how we finished the film.
 
They had given me a small part of the screenplay for the casting. But both the casting and the film put special emphasis on the natural attitude to the things. The question was not to be blameless but by your nature to be part of the role.
 
My character Emili is the sixth boy in the group. Rebel. A specific character.  We have some common features but I’m not as extreme as she is.
 
Read the whole interview on our festival's site www.siff.bg