A Case Study
Narrative | Dramatic Features
Film Name: Away From The Shore
Genre: Drama
Length of film: 134 min.
Date: 2018
Director: Kostadin Bonev
Producer: Kostadin Bonev
Writer: Nikola Petkov, Evgeny Kuzmanov, Kostadin Bonev
Cinematographer: Konstantin Zankov, Orlin Ruevski
Editor: Preslav Belev
Composer: Nikolai Ivanov
Production Company: Trivium Films
Budget: US $800,000
Financing: Bulgarian Film Center
Shooting Format: Digital 2K
Screening Format: 1:1.85
World Premiere: Varna 2018 – Bulgarian National Film Festival
Awards:
– Special Award of Varna Municipality (Varna, Bulgaria)
– Russian Press Award (Sochi, Russia)
– Best Director (Richmond, USA)
– Best Director and Best Cinematography (Prague Independent Film Festival, Czech Republic)
– Special Award of the Festival “The Goddess on the Throne” (Kosovo Film Festival)
– Best Drama Feature (Maracay IFF, Venezuela)
– Best Feature Film (Salto Independent Film Festival FECIS)
– Best Drama Feature, Best Original Score, (Burgos South Cinematographic Academy, Chile)
– Best Film Winner (Madrid IFF)
– Best Supporting Actor – Stefan Valdobrev (Antwerp IFF)
– Best Feature Film (Paris IFF)
– Best Feature Film GCO
Watch the Official Trailer for Away from the shore
Kostadin Bonev has graduated in “Theatre Critical Studie” from National Academy of Theatre and Film Art, Sofia, Bulgaria in 1980. He is a scriptwriter and director of more than 20 documentaries. He post-graduated in film directing in the classes of Georgi Djulgerov.
Kostadin has been awarded a lot of national and international prizes, among them the Grand Prix Centaur in 1995 for Letters to the Nether World, Prix Europa Willy Brandt for The Patience of the Stone, Special Jury Prize in Munich for the same film, The Special Prize of the Film Concern Mosfilm for A War Correspondent, the Golden Rhyton Grand Prix, the Official Best of Fest Award in Seattle (2010), the Los Angeles Reel Film Festival Winner, the London Documentary Film Festival Audience Award Winner for Europolis, the Town of the Delta, and more.
Five of his films won the Film Critics’ Award. He was also awarded the prize for Best Film at the annual awards ceremony of the Bulgarian Association of Filmmakers for the documentaries Under a Cloud and The Patience of the Stone, and for the TV Feature War Correspondent.
Bonev’s feature film Away From The Shore was awarded Best Feature Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Cinematography, and Best Actor at the 10th Global Nonviolent Film Festival. His feature film The Sinking of Sozopol was awarded Best Film at the Global Nonviolent Film Festival in 2016.
indieactivity: What is your film about?
Kostadin Bonev (KB): Away From The Shore is based upon the book Seagulls Away From The Shore by Evgeny Kuzmanov. In Away From the Shore, a talented theatre director has been expelled from the capital city for two years and sent to a small provincial theatre where he wants to put on a play that his thoughts are obsessed with. This play talks about people who are being constantly watched and are living in constant fear of persecution. Gradually, the nightmares from the play begin to move into the real life of the actors.
Give the full description for your film
Kostadin Bonev (KB): The film develops into three levels: on the one hand, there are relationships in the troupe that are not at all easy with this “set bomb” in the repertoire, and on the other hand, there are the relations between the characters in the play, which, as a third level, at some moments emerge from the conventions of art and are transposed into reality amidst the endless vast expanse of the sea.
The story, based on motifs from Evgeniy Kuzmanov’s novel Seagulls Away From The Shore, is apparently set in a time of stagnation in the shallows of developed Socialism.
In this film, I tell a story that happened 30 or 40 years ago because I see the same things happening around me now, today. If we exclude some of the characteristic features of the Socialist era, such as the calling of artists for “instructions” in the offices of local party greats, imposing art councils in theaters, forcing the weak and the uncomfortable ones to sign declarations of cooperation with the State Security, the story could be read universally.
In Away From The Shore, the story of the director who is expelled from Sofia and his troubles in the small provincial theater makes sense only if the audience identifies itself in the story. 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 your own privacy is not new. The difference in our story is that, in order to get rid of his fears and phobias, our protagonist puts on a play in which the things I am talking about are the main topic. The play is about a ship run by a mad captain. Gradually, he imposes an order that makes the crew’s routine extremely difficult; a revolt ensues only when the ship runs out of food. At times, the demonic absurdity in the movie sounds just like George Orwell’s 1984.
Development & Financing
Kostadin Bonev (KB): Away From The Shore is a film project that has been maturing for more than four years. The co-writer, Nikola Petkov, is a theater director with more than 50 years of experience. In time, at each of our meetings, he told me a story that happened to him or to his colleagues. One day, we realized that we had some basis for a screenplay. Gradually, other directors joined the adventure. Soon, actors joined too and started sharing their stories.
Since the film is centered on a theater director and his actors rehearsing for a play, the difficult part was choosing which play to use. First, we chose a legendary performance by the great Bulgarian director Krikor Azaryan, but we quickly realized that competing with a legend is a doomed cause. For this reason, we decided to write our own play which was never staged anywhere.
That is when one of the most successful Bulgarian novelists, Evgeniy Kuzmanov, joined our team and brought along his novel Seagulls Away From The Shore. In 2000, Sofia’s secondhand booksellers announced that Seagulls Away From The Shore was the most demanded book in Bulgaria.
No one who owned the novel since its release in the 1980s wanted to part with it. It became the basis for our film, it took over the other scenes uniting them and turning them into a whole.
We were supported by the Bulgarian Film Center, the Odessa Film Studio from Ukraine, as well as several small studios from Bulgaria which made the realization of the film possible.
Production
Kostadin Bonev (KB): The preparation for shooting took about a year. We were ready to start principal photography in the autumn of 2017. For locations, we used a real ship and a real provincial theater that was preserved over the years. The actors were ready to participate in the film at any price since they found themselves in the script – with their worries, fears, and inevitable compromises. Due to financial shortages, we had to shoot the film in five weeks. We filmed one week in Burgas, on the Black Sea, three weeks in Yambol, a city in southern Bulgaria, and one week in Sofia.
The biggest challenge was that the ship was at the dock, the sea could not be seen from it and the editing and visual effects had to be accurately read. The editor, still a student at one of the film academies in Bulgaria, worked as an assistant on set which helped him a lot with the editing later.
There were two cinematographers and we shot most of the complicated scenes with two cameras. Konstantin Zankov is a cinematographer with enormous experience, he is practically the director of photography of all my films. Orlin Ruevski has always been around in all my feature films. He manages “taming” the camera in his hands and does with it whatever he wants.
The method of working with the composer Nikolay Ivanov is a separate story that deserves a conversation apart. Nikolai creates the music after reading the script and after a series of conversations between us. It always turns out that his music is accurate to the frame. He is one of the best European composers of film music. His music from our film The Patience of the Stone was included in the music compilation The Best East European Film Music that was released on CD in France, Japan, and South Korea.
The editing and grading were done in Pro Film BG. The owner of the studio is Toni Todorov. He is a film engineer who was close to the camera during the whole principal photography which helped a lot during the grading period. The sound design of the film is 5.1 and was mastered at Film Sound Studio by Valentin Kirilov.
Festival Preparation & Strategy
Kostadin Bonev (KB): The first festival participation of Away From The Shore was at the Odessa Film Festival & Awards, where the film received the Russian Press Award. This was followed by participation to film festivals in Fajr and in Jaipur, India. In April 2017, the film had its American premiere at the Richmond Film Festival in Virginia, where it won the director’s award. Meanwhile, the film has been screened at several film festivals in Europe. In Prague, it won the awards for Best Direction and Best Cinematography, and in Kosovo, it won the Statuette “The Goddess of the Throne”.
2020 was the year when Away From The Shore toured all over South America and brought a series of awards from Venezuela, Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay.
In 2021, the film was successful at the independent film festivals in Paris, Antwerp, Munich, Madrid, London, and Arvika, Sweden. The latest awards are from the Global Nonviolent Film Festival, which included the film in its streaming platform Global Cinema Online.
The Release?
KB: The genre definition “drama” itself predetermines the film’s target. It would be difficult to place the film in multiplexes with popcorn and Coca-Cola. Its place is in art cinemas. There are four of them in Sofia. And another thirty throughout Bulgaria. The other place where the film feels well is the summer cinemas where an audience of a thousand or more people can gather.
Its premiere broadcasting on National Television is expected soon.
Where can the film be watched today?
KB: The film is still playing in the art cinemas in Bulgaria. The distributor of the film for Bulgaria, A Plus Films, is the owner of most of those cinemas. Internationally, the film is released and streamed on their channel Global Cinema Online.
Advice for other Filmmakers?
KB: Every artist must be ready to be as sincere as possible in front of the audience. Viewers do not forgive fake. They feel it and they are merciless. But mere sincerity is not enough. There must be some message behind sincerity that touches the string in this person who stands in the dark and absorbs the images that you have arranged in some order. The problem is how long your message will stay – a year, two, ten years… a century… The same can be said for a newspaper or a novel.
We are witch doctors to some extent. Words are coming out of our lips to surprise people. Sometimes they seem strange, even unbelievable. And sometimes after a while, after ten years, or 20, the messages astonish with their accuracy, even ourselves.
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