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FLORENTINE NIGHT

The film is composed of two separate stories in parallel.
Maximilian narrates to Maria, who is seriously ill, a mysterious story from his childhood - how he felt in love with a beautiful statue. The loss of the statue affects his whole life. Maximilian becomes a sculptor in search of mean to recreate it.
Philip the watchmaker is devoid of any musical sensibility, but forced to enter a music competition in order to win the hand of his beloved. For this reason, he builds a musical machine that will win the contest for him.
"Florentine Night" is also a tale of friendship, of hidden desires, of the pursuit of self-discovery, and the love for the art, the sculpture, the dance and the music.
The screenplay is based on the works of Heinrich Heine and Gérard de Nerval.

  • Sotir Gelev
    Director
  • Sotir Gelev
    Writer
  • Penko Gelev
    Producer
  • Sotir Gelev
    Producer
  • Alexander Uzunov
    Key Cast
    "Maximilian"
  • Nina Gavazova
    Key Cast
    "Maria"
  • Vejen Velchovski
    Key Cast
    "The Doctor"
  • Penko Gelev
    Production designer
  • Sotir Gelev
    Production designer
  • Penko Gelev
    Character design
  • Sotir Gelev
    Character design
  • Blagoi Dimitrov
    Animation
  • Penko Gelev
    Backgrounds artist
  • Roumen Boyadjieff-junior
    Music
  • Blagoi Dimitrov
    ound design
  • Penko Gelev
    Character models
  • Penko Gelev
    Textures
  • Sotir Gelev
    Textures
  • Project Type:
    Animation
  • Genres:
    Romance, Drama
  • Runtime:
    1 hour 17 minutes 44 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    September 8, 2022
  • Production Budget:
    250,000 EUR
  • Country of Origin:
    Bulgaria
  • Country of Filming:
    Bulgaria
  • Language:
    Bulgarian
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Digital Cinema Package:
    Unavailable
  • 18 World Festival of Animated Film, 2022
    Varna
    Bulgaria
    September 8, 2022
    Bulgarian Premiere
    Best Bulgarian Film
  • Cinelibri 2022
    Sofia
    Bulgaria
    October 16, 2022
Director Biography - Sotir Gelev

Sotir Gelev is a Bulgarian filmmaker, writer and artist. His first animated film, "The Chicken", was part of the Berlinale selection in 1984, and won the Golden Dove price in Leipzig the same year.
He is also the author and illustrator of several children's book who has won many national literature and illustration awards.
In the 1980s he drew and wrote series of comics for the magazine "Duga" which has cult status in Bulgaria. After 2013, he became one of the organizers of the Sofia Comics Expo, which is attended by hundreds of artists from all over the world. He is also one of the founder members of the National Prize "Alexander Denkov" for contribution to the art of comics.
In the 1990s, he worked as a special effects supervisor and art director for many Bulgarian films.
Sotir Gelev is a screenwriter and director of numerous fiction and animated films, including two feature films. As producer he has produced several Bulgarian feature films, documentaries and animation films, as well as children's television series, which have won numerous national and international awards.

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Director Statement

The script is inspired by the texts of Heinrich Heine and Gérard de Nerval. These are classic works of 19th-century Romanticism that have won us over with the enigmatic and ambivalent attitude the authors have toward love. Their works are beautiful, refined, very imaginative and romantic, tender and passionate at the same time.
The protagonist spends the night by the bedside of a girl dying of tuberculosis, his friend, constantly telling her stories or reading her a book. He dispels the loneliness of the sick and doomed heroine and simultaneously frees himself from the oppression of his memories.
We have strived for the image to support the narrative and to plastically enrich the plot, giving it mood and giving character to the characters.
An important element of the film is the music. It is constantly present and an essential part of the story (even directly influencing the plot). We paid special attention to Ferenc Liszt's performance, which serves to create a sonic backdrop to the era.
You could say that we liked the idea of telling a love story in the spirit of the nineteenth century, strongly influenced pictorially by German Romanticism and emotionally by the magical fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm.