02-06-2021

Bulgarian The Naked Truth about Zhiguli Band Becomes Domestic Hit Despite Restrictions

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    The Naked Truth about Zhiguli Band by Victor Bojinov The Naked Truth about Zhiguli Band by Victor Bojinov

    SOFIA: The entertaining low budget musical comedy The Naked Truth about Zhiguli Band directed by Victor Bojinov has had a record number of 113,059 admissions and over 500,000 EUR gross since its theatrical release on 16 April 2021. Despite the reduced capacity of cinemas, the film has entered the Bulgarian Top 5 for the last 30 years.

    bTV Studios has released the film in 42 cinemas with 69 screens throughout the country. Given that at the beginning of the distribution the audience could not exceed 30% of the capacity of the cinemas, and that only recently the percentage was raised up to 50%, the success of the film is reported as excellent.

    According to Bojinov, known for his domestic box office topper Heights (Serpentine Ltd, Bulgaria / Dream Factory, North Macedonia), “during the forthcoming summer additional open-air stages will be added with many more screenings ahead”.

    Scriptwriters Vanya Nikolova and Nelly Dimitrova inserted numerous comic situations in their original story about some forgotten musicians and their pop group Zhiguli, which was at the height of its fame in the 80s. It looks like nothing can bring them back together, but suddenly they are forced to stand side by side again.

    The main actors Phillip Avramov, Mihail Bilalov, Dimitar Rachkov, Paraskeva Djukelova, Gerasim Georgiev, Lilia Maraviglia and Irini Jambonas are very popular with the local audience.

    The DoP Anton Bakarski is Bojinov’s regular collaborator. The composers Peter Dundakov and Joro Nikolov wrote six original interpretations of rock pieces from the 80s.

    Shooting took place for 20 days in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic in August 2020 in Sofia and on the Black Sea coast.

    The film was produced by Concept studio and it was supported with around 200,000 EUR by the Bulgarian National Film Center, the Burgas Municipality, and private sponsors.