With approximately 20 fiction features being produced every year, Bulgarian cinema often lacks films about teenagers. First-time director Petya Yossifova is making steps towards a better representation of teenagers in her country’s cinema with Jiri (working title), a musical teen drama. The film is being produced by Ars Digital Studio, represented by producer (and also the film’s DoP) Ivan Tonev, with Zographic Films and the Alma Alter University Theatre in Sofia serving as co-production companies.

The screenplay, written by Nikolay Georgiev, centres around Jiri, a 20-year-old man training to compete in a marathon, Pinko, a street musician of the same age, and Lily, a high school girl who is attracted to Jiri. The three protagonists and their friends (or enemies) will face various challenges that will push them towards adulthood.

The feature had a budget of approximately €200,000, the entirety of this amount coming from the Bulgarian National Film Center. Producer Ivan Tonev tells Cineuropa that the young age of the main actors led to a "very lively atmosphere" during the shoot, which took place over four weeks in September and October last year. "There were about eight songs we shot live, which created a particularly pleasant atmosphere for the team. The story is a musical teen drama, and all leading, supporting and amateur actors were teenagers. We tried to engage a large part of the team, which also consisted of young professionals, and what we got was a nice generational happening," the producer explains. Tonev also says that approximately 0.5% of the budget was spent on carefully observing the COVID-19 health regulations and nobody on the team got infected during the shoot.

Director Petya Yossifova says her film "unfolds as a story about a generation yearning for its own development." The main challenge in the life of her protagonists is choosing one of the two paths they have in front of them, "one of spirituality, art and theatre, the other of intoxication, drugs and gloomy corners to lurk about." She also says that the exploration of "otherness," of being different and misunderstood, a feeling that many teenagers experience in various degrees of intensity, is important to her feature.

Jiri will wrap post-production in June. Plans are being made for an October domestic release.