Fringe movies such as horror and documentary are increasingly turning to digital releases. It allows for creative freedom but doesn’t easily pay the rent
Ratings info(May contain spoilers)
There is strong language ( f k ), as well as milder bad language such as bitch , pussy , dick , piss , ass , bastard , balls , shit and God .
A man snorts cocaine on several occasions. A man is informed that, as an act of spite, his drinks have been laced with heroin in an attempt to get him addicted to the drug. There are verbal references to drug misuse, including an implication of steroid abuse.
Two women perform oral sex on a man in undetailed fashion. There are also strong, crude sex references, including an image on a phone of a woman showing her buttocks as she bends over in a sexualised pose.
Last modified on Wed 28 Apr 2021 08.06 EDT
Itâs to debut director Yavor Petkovâs credit that, with his coke-hoovering Balkans wideboy Danny, he has created an extremely annoying cinematic character to rival Steven Stifler of American Pie, Jim Carreyâs Cable Guy and Jar Jar Binks. Petkov however, has done it on purpose â and his mockumentary about a hipster film crew following around this smalltown councillor-cum-petty mafioso, played by Dimo Alexiev, blossoms into a deeply uncomfortable viewing experience.
The set-up is this: Danny takes Susan (Kate Nichols) and her British crew under his wing to show them around his Bulgarian town. Ostensibly taking part in a documentary on money-laundering, this mean-faced braggart has no shame and operates an access-all-areas policy: they film him berating the local âpeasantsâ, scope out the chocolate factory heâs planning, and watch him bully a bank official. If they didnât already know theyâd snagg
Yavor Petkov has to say about making independent cinema and about
Danny being only the second Bulgarian production or co-production to be released exclusively online.
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Cineuropa: You say that you are a bit of an outsider in the Bulgarian film industry. How is it for an outsider to make a film there?
Yavor Petkov: It was easier than I had anticipated. The team in Bulgaria arranged great locations, costumes, props and so on and it didnât seem to bother them that I was coordinating everything remotely. The actual production was very smooth, which allowed us to play around and many of those unscripted bits made it to the final cut. However, being an outsider also meant I was locked out of opportunities like development workshops, labs, co-production forums (I did apply to literally everything in Europe) and of course government grants, subsidies and sponsorship of any kindâ¦
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Danny examines the idea of corruption, how it bends rules and how it benefits only a few, harming many others in one way or another. Even the film’s visual style, a homage to the Belgian classic
Man Bites Dog (read more in Petkov’s interview), and premise become an analysis of corruption in a more general sense, as we follow a film crew led by a British journalist (
Kate Nichols) who has been promised an exposé on money laundering by Bulgarian small-town councillor and entrepreneur “extraordinaire” Danny (
Dimo Alexiev). The only problem is that as soon as Danny sees the camera, his own plans for the shoot take centre stage, with demented dreams of making a film that will take Hollywood by storm.