The UK’s Bankside Films has acquired Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov’s comedy satire Triumph, ahead of its world premiere in the Toronto Platform section in September.
Triumph follows a trilogy of films by Grozeva and Valchanov inspired by sensationalist news stories from the directors’ homeland of Bulgaria – The Lesson, which premiered at Toronto in 2014 and went on to win awards in San Sebastian and Tokyo, and Locarno 2016 title Glory.
Grozeva and Valchanov’s joint credits also include The Father, which scooped the Crystal Globe for best film at Karlovy Vary in 2018, ahead of playing at Toronto and the BFI London Film Festival.
Triumph’s cast includes Maria Bakalova, star of Guardians of the Galazy Vol. 3, The Apprentice and Oscar-nominated for Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, and Margita Gosheva, who appeared in Glory and The Lesson.
The film is inspired by real events that took place in Bulgaria between 1990 and 1992, during the turbulent early days of Bulgaria’s democracy. A classified task force of high-rank army officers, led by a psychic channeler, start digging a hole in search of mysterious artifacts.
Producers are Kristina Grozeva, Petar Valchanov, Konstantina Stavrianou, Irini Vougioukalou, the film’s star Bakalova and Julian Kostov, for Bulgaria’s Abraxas Film and Greece’s Graal Films, in co-production with GFC, ERT, Five Oceans, Red Carpet and Dystopia Films with the support of BNFC, Eurimages, Creative Europe MEDIA, BNT.
“Using the tools of comedy and satire, Triumph explores the trauma of the communist legacy and how confused and lost the societies of young democracies have turned out to be after the fall of the Iron Curtain,” said Grozeva and Valchanov. “It is also a light-hearted look at an ominous future in which nationalist grandiose desires and military madness reverberate like an echo.”
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