29/08/2017 - The independent feature by the Bulgarian director is expected to wrap next spring

Bulgarian director Dragomir Sholev is currently in post-production with his sophomore feature-length fiction film, The Pig [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Dragomir Sholev
film profile]. The project was presented earlier this month at Sarajevo’s CineLink Work in Progress (read the report). An independent production, The Pig is being produced by Sholev’s Gorilla Film, and co-produced by Nu Boyana and Screening Emotions. Post-production is expected to wrap next spring.

The screenplay, written by Sholev together with Martin Iliev, centres on Pig (Rumen Kochev), a 13-year-old boy who is often bullied at school. The lonely, introverted teenager never answers back to insults, but one day he is pushed to his limits and instinctively hits back with a single, probably fatal blow. Convinced he has just killed one of his colleagues, Pig hides in a nearby forest, thus facing the most harrowing experience of his life. 

The project is now in the editing room, and Sholev still needs €50,000 out of the €210,000 budget in order to wrap the post-production. The film was shot over 20 days in Sofia without any support from the Bulgarian National Film Center. 

Sholev tells Cineuropa that both he and his writing partner, Iliev, faced bullying as young students. Given that reports of aggression in schools are showing up more and more often in the media all over the world, the issue has to be talked about. “This is not a story about a bullied kid; it is also a story about how aggression produces outsiders,” Sholev says. The director also believes that his story is not necessarily Bulgarian (although he would like his film to spark a debate at home about the increasing levels of aggression in schools), but universal. Telling it from the protagonist’s point of view can create empathy, but it will also discuss a “society where people are so disconnected, bitter and prone to bullying each other”. 

The domestic release of The Pig is expected for the second half of 2018.