21-07-2017

France’s Memento Films Picks up Ilian Metev’s Debut Feature

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    SOFIA: Artscope, the new talent arm of Paris based sales outfit Memento Films International, has picked up Ilian Metev’s feature debut Three Quarters / ¾. This Bulgarian/German coproduction will compete in the Cineasti Del Presente international competition of the 70th Locarno Film Festival. Metev’s long documentary Sofia’s Last Ambulance won a critical kudos and numerous international awards.

    Ilian Metev and Betina Ip wrote the script focusing on the last common summer of an ordinary family composed of a gifted pianist Mila, her younger brother Niki and their father Todor, an overly absorbed astrophysicist. They are all unused to sharing their personal emotions and anxieties.

    “I wanted to focus on everyday moments with their delicate complexities and to avoid almost everything extreme. I am interested in an audiovisual style, which serves the overall film and in a way that becomes invisible,” Metev told FNE.

    „The title is polysemantic.  3 /4 refers to the musical time signature, but also to the four members of the family, with the mother missing, and also to the 3 /4 angle of shooting that I was constantly using,” Metev also said.

    The film stars Mila Mihova, Nikolay Mashalov and Todor Veltchev. The three of them had no acting experience and largely played themselves.Mila is one of the most talented piano students at the Sofia National AcademyofMusic, while Todor is teaching astrophysics at the Sofia University Kliment Ohridski.

    Shooting took place in Sofia in two apartments and also in the streets between June and September 2016. Exteriors were filmed with two cameras (one focusing on each protagonist) and interiors with four cameras in takes that sometimes lasted 20-40 minutes. Julian Atanassov is the DoP.

    The film is a 50/50 coproduction between Bulgaria’s Chaconna Films and Germany’s Sutor Kolonko. The low budget was supported by the Bulgarian National Film Center, ZDF/ARTE, ZDF-Kleines Fernsehspiel, Film und Medienstiftung NRW and Media Creative Europe.

    Metev’s long documentary Sofia’s Last Ambulance (2012) was nominated for the Camera d’or at the Cannes’ International Critics’ Week, won the Grand Prix Documentary in Karlovy Vary IFF and became Best German Documentary in 2013.

    Production Information:

    Chaconna Films
    www.ili.metev.com
    This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

    Credits:
    Director: Ilian Metev
    Scriptwriter: Ilian Metev, Betina Ip
    DoP: Julian Atanassov
    Cast: Mila Mihova, Nikolay Mashalov,Todor Veltchev