St. Sofia: The Shadow Beneath Her

Velemir Mitkov

I've studied theatre for 10 years, starting in an amateur troupe and later attending a specialized high school for the arts in Burgas, graduating with a diploma in drama. During that time I taught myself video editing and took a masterclass in screenwriting by Aaron Sorkin, leading to a deep love and understanding of filmmaking. Back in high school I created my first few short movies and even did volunteer commercial work for the school and people attached to it, including a commemorative video for the national event "Нощ на театрите" (Night of the theatre) and I shot and edited a poetry recital for Zonta (charity organisation tackling violence against women). After graduating, I've been studying film professionally in Sofia for the past 3 years and am about to graduate in the next one. During that time, my skillset and professional network have grown tremendously. I've studied and personally attempted every role there is on a professional set, have made countless shorts, written twice that ammount of scripts, in the process fine-tuning my personal style, focused on an abundance of comedic dialogue. Recently I've discovered a deep fondness for documentary filmmaking, having personally spearheaded a few such projects this last year in university. The unique format provides a lot of out of the box opportunities for including comedy (the mockumentary genre) as well as windows to authentic human connection between subject and filmmaker but most importantly: subject and viewer. As the people featured in such films actually exist, they're stories are real and have the potential of captivating their listener in a way entirely unique to that style of filmmaking. And those thoughts have led me here. The film we're submitting isn't comedic in the slightest. It focuses on the "connection" aspect more than anything I've had my hand in up to this point and I view it as the latest culmination of my and my colleagues skills in the medium.