Svetla Tsotsorkova
Sister, Svetla Tsotsorkova (2019)
Svetla Tsotsorkova is a Bulgarian screenwriter, producer, editor, actress, and film director. Her short film Life with Sofia premiered at Sofia, where it won the Jameson Short Film Award, and Trieste, where it won a Special Mention—Jadja (Thirst), her debut feature, premiered at Thessaloniki International Film Festival, San Sebastián, Istanbul and Minsk, where it won a Special Jury Award. Tsotsorkova's second film, Sister, premiered at BFI London, Göteborg, Thessaloniki; the San Sebastián International Film Festival, where it won a New Directors Award - Special Mention, and Warsaw, where it won the FIPRESCI Prize.
In an exclusive interview with Filmatique, Svetla Tsotsorkova discusses film directing as professional lying, the fatuous nature of (most) teenage girls, small town life as a magnifying glass, and her next project.
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FILMATIQUE: Sister follows a girl who lives with her mother and sister, making ceramics to hawk to tourists passing through their provincial Bulgarian town. Bored with her daily existence, Rayna weaves elaborate lies as a way to pass the time and make her life more interesting. Soon enough, however, she gets caught in a web of her own making. When did you first have the idea to make this film?
SVETLA TSOTSORKOVA: The prototype of the main character—it's me. I spent my childhood in a little village somewhere deep in the Bulgarian countryside. The life there was boring and dull. I used to make up stories, create lies in order to get out of this monotonous everyday life. This period of my life as an 'amateur liar' ended somewhere around the beginning of my studies at the Film Academy in Sofia. There I stepped into a new period of my life—I became a 'professional liar'—in other words, I became a film director. This is a joke, of course. I think that the most valuable quality of a film is its sincerity. Even when you are telling the story of a liar, you have to be honest. After working with Monika in my previous film Thirst and seeing that she does a great job as an actress, we decided we had an actress who could play me. And we wrote the script especially for her.
FLMTQ: Monika Naydenova firmly roots Sister as a provocative character study—Rayna is at once mischievous and earnest, elusive and real. Can you discuss your casting process? What is your history with Naydenova, and what was your collaboration like in pre-production and on set?
ST: Sister is the second film in which we work with Monika Naydenova. When we shot Thirst she was only 13 years old. When we shot this one she was 17. To find a child/teenager for Thirst we did casting for 3 years and had seen more than 3,000 girls across Bulgaria. Our meetings with most of these girls were often disappointing: modern children are too much influenced by watching TV shows and reality formats, and they were all trying their best not to be themselves but to pretend to be someone or something else.
Monika doesn't have a gram of vanity; she just lives in the words that are offered to her. Maybe because she doesn't want to become a professional actress and fame doesn't seduce her. I should add to this her remarkable photogenicity— in life she looks like an ordinary girl but on the screen she transforms. This kind of quality is very useful for an actor—to be the perfect chameleon. Both Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde live in Monika, but she doesn't realize it. She just has them inside her.
Sister, Svetla Tsotsorkova (2019)
FILMATIQUE: Like your first film Jajda (Thirst), Sister takes place in a small town in Bulgaria, attuned to nuances in interpersonal relationships and the decelerated pace of rural existence. Why do you believe you gravitate toward these landscapes and the people who populate them? Can you discuss your relationship with the towns where you've shot these films?
ST: Small towns are like magnifying glass through which you can observe people. There they do not hide behind masks. In the small towns everybody knows each other. There is no way to live wearing a mask when your whole life is on display in front of everyone. In the small towns there is another issue—how to preserve the spirit, the mentality, the faith in the immateriality and essence of things in a world that lacks discretion and semitones. That is why observing these people is so interesting to me—as a laboratory experiment but with living people. As a director, I never stop being surprised by the diversity of human nature that unfolds under this magnifying glass.
FLMTQ: Who are some of your favorite directors working today, or past directors that you believe have influenced your style?
ST: I have always liked Milos Forman's early films, made in Czechoslovakia. I also like Jiri Menzel with his merciless love and sense of humor. I like Ken Loach and Mike Leigh. I like the themes and topics of their films, the way they work with actors and also their civil and aesthetic courage to defend their style. Among younger directors, I like Alice Rohrwacher with her sense and ability to combine reality and absurdity.
Sister, Svetla Tsotsorkova (2019)