In this observational film director Nikolay Stefanov takes the audience to the football gang from the roughest city in Bulgaria — Pernik. A once flourishing industrial center that used to provide energy to the whole country, today Pernik is mostly known with the jokes about its citizens’ roughness. Tsetso, Mimeto, Dado and the whole gang are devoted to their team’s success, carrying the fighting spirit of their ancestors, the miners.
Bulgaria, 81 min., 2022, Bulgarian with English subtitles
Script: Mariana Sabeva, Nikolay Stefanov, and Ralitsa Golemanova
Director: Nikolay Stefanov
Cinematography: Nikolay Stefanov
Music: A list of Bulgarian and international artists
Production company/ies: Smarty Pants Shooter (Bulgaria) and HBO MAX
Director’s Biography:
Having graduated with an MA in Cinematography in 2003, Nikolay Stefanov has experimented with different visual styles and forms in his cinematography work for films, series, and TV. He made his directing debut with two mid-length documentaries in 2016 and 2018. Tackling important and sensitive social topics, his first feature-length documentary No Place for You in Our Town (2022), a coproduction with HBO MAX, had its world premiere at CPH:DOX 2022 and has traveled to more than 20 of the best film festivals. Nikolay Stefanov’s next documentary, Making Friends with the Idea of a Father (2023), is in production and was developed in the international program EURODOC.