14/03/2005 - A prize-winner at many festivals, Zornitsa Sofija’s first feature is likely to become a great commercial success too. And Variety compared the 27-year-old actress Vesela Kazakova with Jody Foster in Taxi driver

Contemporary cinema in Bulgaria has just added a valuable item to its resumé, a prize-winner at many festivals which is likely to become a great commercial success too. This film is Mila sa Marsa (Mila From Mars), Zornitsa Sofija’s first feature. Ten month after its first screening at the Sofia Filmfest, it is now released on all national screens. This is quite an event, for it is the first Bulgarian movie in a few years to be distributed in all the country. The good rumours and favourable reviews, in the local as well as the international press, have attracted the Bulgarian public’s attention on this first feature produced without any subvention from the state. This film deals with generational conflicts and the contrast between city life and life in the countryside. A 16-year-old girl, Mila, leaves her underground life in the city to go to a remote village, with only one shop and many abandonned houses. The 27-year-old actress, Vesela Kazakova, has been, for the past 3 years, the most wanted actress in Bulgaria. Variety compared her with Jody Foster in Taxi driver.
‘I usually don’t like actresses, says Zornitsa Sofija, neither do I like female artistic directors and co-producers, for that matter. Actresses are generally whimsical, and their one concern is to become primadonnas. When I undertook this low-budget work, I badly needed someone who could be entirely dedicated to the film. Vesela struck me as the One, and when I saw her previous films, I knew I was right.’

(Translated from Italian)