site.btaSofia Film Fest Pays Tribute to Directors Ivan Cherkelov and Ludmil Todorov

Sofia Film Fest pays tribute to Bulgarian film directors Ivan Cherkelov (1957-2022) and Ludmil Todorov (1955-2023) with a special screening of their films, Art Fest said Thursday. On March 14, Cherkelov’s Fragments of Love and Todorov’s The Migration of the Belted Bonito will screen at the French Institute in Sofia.

Ivan Cherkelov is one of the most significant Bulgarian film authors, a spiritually purposeful and uncompromising filmmaker, writes film critic Genoveva Dimitrova. He graduated, together with Ludmil Todorov, from the legendary class of director Georgi Dyulgerov at the Sofia Institute of Theatrical Art. As students, the two, who were also close friends, were assistant directors and actors in Dyulgerov’s classic film Measure for Measure (1981).

Ivan Cherkelov became famous with his graduation film project Ballad (1982). His debut Fragments of Love (1988), which has kept its legend status so many years on, deals with friendships and sins, irony and love, frustration and freedom, nakedness and pain. And it still looks filmed today, says Dimitrova. Fragments of Love is the first fully digitized Bulgarian film. Ludmil Todorov is in the cast. Ivan Cherkelov, for his part, plays in Todorov's equally glorious debut Dogs on the Run (1988), and appears briefly towards the end of the wonderful The Love Summer of a Schlepp (1990).

Cherkelov’s filmography also includes Rolling Stones (1995, Bulgaria-France), Glass Beads (1999, Best Actress award for Zhana Karaivanova from the Golden Rose festival in Varna), The Inverted Christmas Tree (2006, Bulgaria-Germany, Special Jury Award from Karlovy Vary), Crabs (2009), Family Relics (2015, Special Jury Prize from Golden Rose festival), Don't Argue with the Bath Staff (2020). In his films Cherkelov sought meaning in meaninglessness and looked deeply into the world around him. His films are strongly autobiographical to the point of the confessional.

Ludmil Todorov remains “one of the most talented and evocative authors, and the most insightful storytellers of present-day Bulgaria through feature films”, writes Genoveva Dimitrova. He left behind seven films, all much different from one another: The Love Summer of a Schlepp (Best Film from Torino and Jury Award from the Golden Rose Festival in Varna), Emilia’s Friends (1996, Bulgaria-France, FIPRESCI Award from Thessaloniki and the award of the jury and of film critics from the Golden Rose Festival); Two Men out of Town (1998); Emigrants (2002, with Ivaylo Hristov as co-director, winner of a Golden Rose and Best Film from Sofia Film Fest in 2003); Seamstresses (2007); The Migration of the Belted Bonito (2011). 

Apart from an outstanding film maker Todorov was also a talented writer with some ten books published between his first (Losing Winnie the Pooh) in 1988 and the last (Change of Optics) in 2022. 

Todorov’s friends, family and colleagues have put together a book with the script of The Migration of the Belted Bonito and comments by the film cast and crew, which will be available on the day of the screening.