Ivaylo Minov
Writer / Director
Bulgaria
Ivaylo Minov is an award-winning short film director, best known for his films Lunch Break and Parking, which was awarded Best Short Film by the Bulgarian Film Academy and Best Bulgarian Short by In The Palace Film Fest, and competed at the major fest in Clermont-Ferrand, Glasgow, Sofia and Vilnius. He’s currently in post-production of his short The One You Follow and developing his feature debut, Electricity. Ivaylo has worked as a journalist before gaining experience in the film industry as casting director, first and second AD and location manager. He is a graduate the London Film Academy in 2007 and an established commercials director.
Project
Electricity
A door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman rings the door of a single mother whose son is in waking coma. The salesman’s visit triggers a discovery about the boy’s supernatural abilities. This leads to a conspiracy that involves a scheming ex-colonel and his posse, facing off with a mysterious scarred girl helped by an awkward hardcore band. Fairytale meets dark comedy in a post-socialist world where happy-ends are not what they seem to be.
Electricity is set in a drab, modern-day Sofia, but its universe is peppered with magical realism. The film tells a story confined to a single apartment building, which could also serve as a scale model of Bulgarian society today. The neighbours’ community has its own infrastructure, hierarchy and power struggles that weirdly and inevitably mirror the forces twirling in the larger world; and with all the prejudices, moral ambiguity and flawed humanity that we discover in people around us on a daily basis.
