EXCLUSIVE: It’s a homecoming for Maria Bakalova who is starring in and producing Triumph, the first movie she has done in her native Bulgaria following her breakout role in Borat 2, which launched her Hollywood career. Bakalova has joined the cast of Triumph alongside another Bulgarian actor who has found success internationally, Shadow and Bone‘s Julian Kostov. The duo will produce through their company Five Oceans.
The darkly comedic Triumph (Триумф) is directed by award-winning Bulgarian filmmakers Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov whose most recent movie, The Father, featured Bakalova and was selected as Bulgaria’s 2021 International Oscar entry after winning the Grand Prix award at the 2019 Karlovy Vary film festival.
photo: Diana King
Bakalova, who will play the lead, and Kostov join leading Bulgarian actors Julian Vergov and The Father star Margita Gosheva in Triumph, a military satire inspired by well known, wild real-life events from the 1990s when, in the chaotic aftermath of the fall of communism, a task force comprised of high-ranking Bulgarian army officers and psychics embarked on a top-secret military operation in the small village of Tsarichina to dig up an elusive alien artifact that would change the course of history and make Bulgaria great again.
Filming on Triumph, part of a movie trilogy by Grozeva and Valchanov that also includes the 2014 The Lesson and the 2016 Glory, is currently underway in Bulgaria.
Grozeva and Valchanov as well as Kostov played key roles in Bakalova’s success with Borat 2, which landed her a 2021 Oscar nomination.
Because acting training in Bulgaria is traditionally geared heavily towards theater, a lot of what she did learn about movie acting, which helped her give the performance in Borat, she owes to Grozeva and Valchanov, the actress told Deadline in 2020. The top filmmakers taught the only film acting class at the Bulgarian National Academy for Theater and Film Arts while Bakalova was a student there, and she loved it so much she volunteered to help them with scheduling and other tasks so that she could attend each week, not only when it was her turn to perform. She even traveled with Grozeva and Valchanov to the set of a film the pair were directing and rendered free PA services just so she could watch and learn.
Bakalova was in her third year at the Academy when one of the directors invited her to audition for a very small part in The Father, which Bakalova landed. The movie went on the festival circle and was seen by Nancy Bishop, the casting director for Borat Subsequent Moviefilm. As she sought a performer to play Borat’s daughter Tutar, she had already reached out to Kostov and had asked him to assist in finding young Bulgarian actresses to audition. Bakalova didn’t know Kostov then, but they became friends as Kostov guided her through the audition process, and the two are now producing partners.
photo: Boryana Simeonova
While auditioning for Borat 2 in the summer after graduating from the Academy in 2019, Bakalova shot a couple of movies in Bulgaria, including a starring role in Women Do Cry, which premiered at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival and also screened at South by Southwest. Triumph marks Bakalova’s return to Bulgarian cinema.
For Kostov, this marks his first feature in which he is acting in his native Bulgarian language after building a career in the UK over the past 10 years, performing in English — as well as Spanish (Flack), Italian (Back), Polish (Wild Bill), Russian (Berlin Station, Treadstone), and Romanian (Temple).
Co-writer and executive producer on Triumph is Decho Taralezhkov, Valchanov and Grozeva’s writing partner since their sophomore feature Glory. The movie is a co-production between Abraxas Film and their long-time partners from Greek production company Graal Films. It is funded by the Bulgarian National Film Center, the Greek Film Centre, Eurimages, MEDIA, Bulgarian National Television and ERT.
Triumph is Bakalova and Kostov’s first production through their company Five Oceans which aims to tell Bulgarian, Balkan and Slavic stories and bring them to international audiences. The duo have advocated better representation for actors from Eastern Europe with a focus on the Balkans, as well as the normalization of foreign accents on screen and shedding negative stereotypes often associated with characters from that region in Hollywood and other international productions.
Following her breakout role as Borat’s (Sacha Baron Cohen) teenage daughter Tutar in Prime Video’s Borat Subsequent Moviefilm in which she spoke almost exclusively Bulgarian, Bakalova did Judd Apatow’s Netflix comedy The Bubble. The actress can currently be seen starring in A24’s horror-comedy Bodies Bodies Bodies from director Halina Reijn, and will soon appear as Cosmo the Spacedog in James Gunn’s Marvel pic Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. Also coming up for Bakalova is the adventure comedy film The Honeymoon, recently acquired by Prime Video and Grindstone, which she starred in and produced.
Kostov recurred in Netflix’s fantasy series Shadow and Bone and can be next seen in the reboot of superhero comedy horror film The Toxic Avenger.
Bakalova is repped by CAA, Brookside Artist Management and Insight Management & Production in the UK. Kostov is repped by Jared Schwartz of Industry Entertainment and Insight Management & Production in the UK.
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