22/06/2023 - The drama centres on an elderly translator facing the terrible consequences of cancer

After co-writing A Picture with Yuki [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Lachezar Avramov
film profile] (2019) with director Lachezar Avramov and writing Avramov’s second feature, 2022’s Yellow Oleander (see the news), Bulgaria’s Dimitar Stoyanovich makes his debut as a director with Flesh, a drama based on his own screenplay and his own personal experiences. PREMIERstudio is producing, with Nikolay Mutafchiev serving as the main producer. The project is being co-produced by Samsara, which will also distribute the film in Bulgaria next spring.

The screenplay centres on Nadejda (Plamena Getova), an elderly translator who is currently translating Flesh, the latest novel by (fictional) Japanese writer and Nobel Prize winner Yukio Kobayashi. As she works hard to finish the translation, Nadejda discovers that she has a brain tumour. In his screenplay, Stoyanovich explores Nadejda’s relationship with her daughter (Vesela Babinova), also bringing to life paragraphs from Kobayashi's novel and even the progression of Nadejda's tumour.

Producer Nikolay Mutafchiev tells Cineuropa that the film’s budget amounts to circa €320,000, with approximately €200,000 coming from the Bulgarian National Film Center. Mutafchiev also says that one of the biggest challenges of Flesh was to realistically recreate the evolution of the protagonist’s ailment, for which special make-up and special effects were used extensively. For her part, actress Plamena Getova rehearsed for one month and met with cancer patients.

The film was shot over almost 30 days from late November to late December last year, on location in Sofia and in a studio. Rali Ralchev is the film's DoP. Julian Vergov, Dilyana Popova, Rashko Mladenov, Rushi Videnliev, Nâzım Karakurt, Stefan Mavrodiev and Nikolaos Tsitiridis play supporting characters.

Director Stoyanovich – who drew inspiration from his own mother, actress Ani Bakalova, who died from cancer in 2015, when writing the screenplay – says, “Flesh is first and foremost a psychological narrative about us, humans. About our fears. About the end of our existence and how we accept it. Are we even capable of accepting it? There is something touching and admirable in one's doomed resistance to death. This is the main philosophical approach [of my film]: a new beginning to life can come only after you have accepted that there must be an end,” the director explains.