site.btaThe Man Who Could Not Remain Silent Is Part of Bulgaria's Contribution to Oscar Academy Awards

On January 23, 2025, The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent received an Oscar nomination in the Best Short Film category. It was selected from a total of 180 titles. The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent is a co-production between Croatia, France, Bulgaria and Slovenia, supported by the Bulgarian National Film Centre. The Bulgarian producer is Katya Trichkova through Contrast Films.

The film, directed by Nebojsa Slijepcevic, tells the story of the events of February 27 1993 in Bosnia and Herzegovina, when passenger train from Belgrade to Bar was stopped by paramilitary forces as part of an ethnic cleansing operation. As they haul off innocent civilians, only one man out of 500 passengers dares to stand up to them. 

The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent opened the 42nd edition of the Golden Rose Bulgarian Feature Film Festival in September 2024 in Varna. The film was also presented at the 38th edition of Kinomania in November 2024, when the audience had a meeting with the director Nebojsa Slijepcevic and the team from the Bulgarian side - producer Katya Trichkova, Geo Karl Pavlov - costume designer, Sofia Zhecheva - assistant sound designer, Kristina Samsarova - associate producer, Ivan Andreev - sound design and mix.

A number of Bulgarians have been involved with the American Academy Awards before, in one way or another. 

Navalny, starring Bulgarian journalist Hristo Grozev, won an Academy Award in the Best Documentary category at the ceremony in Los Angeles in 2024. Director Daniel Rohr thanked investigative journalist Hristo Grozev from the stage. “We owe so much to Hristo Grozev, our Bulgarian, the intellect with his laptop,” he said. “Hristo, you risked everything to tell this story”. The film was shot while Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny was recovering in Berlin, Germany, where he was receiving treatment after being poisoned in Russia on August 20, 2020, with a nerve agent. The production also won the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Award for Best Documentary on February 19, 2023.

The Bulgarian song Polegnala e Todora performed by the Mystery of Bulgarian Voices choir sounds in the Irish film The Banshees of Inisherin, nominated this year in 9 Oscar categories. It was directed by Martin McDonagh and starred American actor Colin Farrell. Bulgarian stuntman Todor Lazarov is among the producers of the Indian film RRR, which won the Oscar in 2024 in the Best Original Song category.

The first Bulgarian actress to receive an Oscar nomination is Maria Bakalova. On March 15, 2021, she was nominated in the Best Supporting Actress category for her role in Sacha Barron Cohen's Borat 2: Subsequent Movie Film. Bakalova is competing for the award with Glenn Close - for Hillbilly Elegy, Olivia Colman - for The Father, Amanda Seyfried - for Mank and Yoon Yoo-juni - for Minari, who won the award at the ceremony on April 25, 2021.

In 2021, a film with Bulgarian participation is nominated for the Academy Awards. This is the 19-minute 2019 Feeling Through, which is competing for the Best Short Feature Film award. Bulgarian doctors Prof. Ilian Ivanov and Dr. Dana Prodanova are its associate producers. The writer and director is Doug Roland and the executive producer is Marley Matlin.

The first Bulgarian to take the stage at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles for the Academy Awards is Dimitar Marinov. In 2019, director Peter Farrelly's Green Book won the Academy Award in the Best Picture category at the 91st Academy Awards. In it, the actor plays the supporting role of the musician Oleg. At the ceremony on February 24, 2019, at the announcement of the award along with the entire crew of the film, Dimitar Marinov takes the stage with the Bulgarian flag tucked into the pocket of his suit.

Two of Theodore Ushev's films have competed for an Academy Award as well. On January 24, 2017, the short animated film Blind Vaysha, based on the short story of the same name by the writer Georgi Gospodinov, was nominated for the Academy Award for Animated Short Film. In 2019, Theodore Ushev's The Physics of Sorrow was shortlisted for the Academy Awards. Of the 92 films in the preliminary selection, 10 have been chosen, one of which is The Physics of Sorrow, based on the novel of the same name by Georgi Gospodinov.

Until 2017 Conservfilm by animator Zlatin Radev was the only Bulgarian Oscar nomination for a short film. The 1990 film has won more than 20 awards and was nominated for an Academy Award in 1991. In 2010, a Bulgarian film reached the semi-finals of the Oscars in competition with 65 titles from around the world. The World is Big and Salvation Lurks Everywhere, directed by Stefan Komandarev and based on the novel of the same name by Iliya Troyanov, is among the nine contenders for foreign-language Oscar nominations. The Bulgarian National Television is a co-producer of the film. Although the film was not included in the final list of five nominations announced on February 2, 2010 - a major breakthrough for Bulgarian cinema.

Two Bulgarians have been awarded Oscars for scientific and technical achievements and visual effects.

The first is George Borshukov, an expert in cinematic special effects, who in 1997, during his specialization in the USA, was invited to become part of the visual effects team for the film What Dreams May Come. The film won the Oscar for “Best Visual Effects” on March 21, 1999. Borshukov was also one of the members of the team that worked on the effects for The Matrix, which won four Academy Awards on March 26, 2000, one of them for Best Visual Effects. On March 2, 2001 and on February 7 2015, Borshukov, together with Kim Libreri and Dan Piponi, received an Oscar (certificate) respectively for technical achievement for developing an image generation system allowing choreographed camera movement through computer graphics reconstructed dacers and for the company's Universal capture technology Esc entertainment. George Borshukov also participated in the teams that worked on the visual effects of the films The Matrix: Reloaded, The Matrix: Revolutions, Mission Impossible, Deep Blue and Michael Jordan to the Max.

On February 11, 2017 in Los Angeles, Bulgarian Vladimir Koylazov, then CTO and co-founder of the software company Chaos Group, received a plaque with an engraved figure of the Oscar statuette for his overall contribution in the category of “Science and Engineering Technology” for the original concept, design and implementation of the V-Ray technology, which has been used in productions such as Game of Thrones, Doctor Strange, Deadpool, etc. The Academy awards the prize to innovators whose “inventions contribute significantly to the quality of motion picture productions.”