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PRODUCTION Bulgaria

Nadejda Koseva in production with her first feature, Irina

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- Partially shot in August, the project is preparing for three weeks of shooting in December

Nadejda Koseva in production with her first feature, Irina
Nadejda Koseva (right) on the set of Irina

Nadejda Koseva, known for producing Svetla Tsotsorkova's Thirst [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Svetla Tsotsorkova
film profile
]
(currently nominated by the European Film Academy for the European Discovery Award), started production for her debut feature, Irina [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Martina Apostolova
film profile
]
, in August. As the story spans two seasons, a second part of the shoot is scheduled for December, in Sofia and Pernik, a small mining town near the Bulgarian capital. 

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The project is written by Koseva together with Svetoslav Ovharov (also a writing partner for Thirst). The story centres on Irina, a poor young woman who must take care of her young child and her crippled husband. Her improvisations cause a string of misadventures, so she embraces the seemingly perfect solution: becoming a surrogate mother for a childless couple. The main characters are played by Martina Apostolova, Irini Jambonas, Hristo Ushev, Aleksandar Kosev and Kasiel Noa Asher.

Irina is being produced by Stefan Kitanov's production company, Art Fest, together with Ovharov's Omega Films. Kitanov tells Cineuropa that the project was initially planned as a bigger European co-production, but after receiving debut-film funding from the Bulgarian National Film Center, it was recalibrated as a smaller production, with a €450,000 budget. Kitanov also says that, after wrapping, the team may approach foreign co-production partners.

Koseva tells Cineuropa that her “feminine, but not feminist” story is “about rediscovering the world by bringing a new life into it”. She also says that one of the purposes of her film is to use the story, the actors’ personal experiences and the history of the places where The Deal is being shot, and mix them together to form a more complex whole. She also says that the proportion of real and imaginary elements is as important to her film as that of flour and water in bread-making. 

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