El Gouna FF 2019: ‘The Father’: An Interview with the Star, Ivan Barnev
Having breakfast in the special El Gouna Film Festival atmosphere of friendliness and open discussions with new acquaintances, I began an interesting conversation with the Bulgarian actor Ivan Barnev the costar (with Ivan Savov) of ‘The Father’.
I had seen his film The Father already and though actors are far from my area of expertise as my experience stems from the business of films and not from production, we discussed acting and his part in The Father, the winner of the Grand Prix Crystal Globe Prize of US$ 25,000 at Karlovy Vary, the top Eastern European Film Festival, which was for many years my favorite film festival.
The Father is an intimate family comedy about the difficulties of connecting with those close to us. Told with an “Eastern European” accent and in the particularly droll style of the Bulgarian filmmaking duo Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov, the story opens at a funeral. Vasil has suddenly and unexpectedly lost his wife of many years. When a woman at her funeral proclaims that Ivanka, the dead woman, just called her cellphone, Vasil seeks the help of a well-known psychic in order to contact his wife. His son Pavel tries to bring him to his senses, but Vasil stubbornly insists on doing things his own way.
The Q&A after the screening with the mixed audience of Western and Eastern European and Middle Eastern eyes and mentalities offered a broad spectrum of questions. What is consistent is that we all have fathers and about half of the audience are sons. The issues of family and communication among us all are very similar. In my tired western eyes, I saw the father as an ego-centric, only mildly creative, but full-on jerk who gave his son no respect. I saw the son as a cypher, always foregoing his true feelings in order to placate his insatiable father and his demanding and complaining wife. In trying to deal with these two prime beings in his life, he denies his own self and invents lies to tell them in order not to make waves. You never see him looking into himself and his own feelings and, in particular, at this time of his life he does not seem to introspect about his feelings for his mother or about her unexpected death. He is at the beck and call of his father, his wife and a job as an advertising designer for an always-unsatisfied client.
Someone in the audience suggested this was a film about Old Bulgaria vs. New Bulgaria and in a way that was true. The son, always rushing, never turning inward to realize or mourn his mother’s death; the father seeking answers outside of his communistically sanctioned rationality and instead, he leans toward the arcane.
But more to the point, this was about the generations: the gap between them and the methods of communicating from the cel phone, which plays a huge part in this drama, other-worldly forms of communication which the son despises — until a couple of incidents give him some doubts — to the final scene in which he is finally able to connect with his father and bridge the divide by following his mother’s last words.
Someone asked if the television show he watches briefly was really a message from another dimension. Ivan explained that it was an actual movie and in the story, as the mother had been an actress, it was the mother playing a role in a movie…but the possibility of its timing could be debated as merely coincidence or as a message from powers from another dimension where she might have been dwelling.
The filmmakers like to make “what if’ stories like this, Ivan explained.
As the picture slowly gathers momentum, its story unfolds many of the carefully arranged absurd or comic situations typical for directing team Kristina Grozeva (b. 1976, Sofia, Bulgaria), and Petar Valchanov (b. 1982, Plovdiv, Bulgaria). Grozeva and Valchanov are a writer-producer-director couple based in Sofia, Bulgaria. They first met at the National Academy for Theater and Film Arts and have been working together ever since. In 2009 they created Abraxis Film to produce shorts, features and documentaries with memorable characters and gripping storylines that are equally amusing, upsetting and touching.
Their short film debut Jump (2012) was the first Bulgarian film ever nominated for the European Film Award. Their independent micro-budget feature debut The Lesson (2014) and its follow-up Glory (2016) won multiple awards at the festivals in San Sebastian, Tokyo, Locarno, Gothenburg, Warsaw, Edinburgh, Les Arc, Gijon and many others making them two of the most acclaimed Bulgarian films of the 21st century. These two titles are parts of the directors’ Newspaper Clippings Trilogy of stories inspired by media sensations depicting the absurdity of life in post-communist Bulgaria. The final installment Triumph is currently in development.
Speaking directly with Ivan gave me greater insight into this relatively simple story in which the son tries to save the father from going overboard in a quest to find the message his deceased wife is trying to communicate to him.
The message, left before she died is finally retrieved from the voice-mail of the neighbor and in it, the wife says to make quince jam before the quinces rot on the trees.
In The Father, the generation gap is big and communication only brings larger misunderstandings. The communication by cel is not really communication at all; nor is there a “real” communication by spirit; but by quince, the symbol of fertility in Bulgaria according to Ivan, three generations are joined in a purely human communion as father and son cut up the ripe quince to make quince jam to satisfy the craving of the pregnant wife.
The ever-demanding wife who repeatedly tells her husband how she yearns for quince jam will thereby be satisfied as the father and son, after their 24-hour crazy journey, cut the quince fruit together and the son tells his father he is also soon to become a father.
Sydney: Did you always want to become an actor?
Ivan Barnev: In my family, no one ever considered such things as acting, though I might have had the childish fantasy about creating stories as some point. My father was a pilot and my mother was a businesswoman. We were not a family with any orientation toward the arts of any kind.
When I was 12 or 13, I met someone who was building a studio and he suggested I come and try a class in pantomime. I was just beginning to become a bit conscious and the class kickstarted my imagination as I realized that what is in your imagination can be communicated wordlessly through your body’s gestures and motions. It was a very good beginning for acting to learn to use your body to convey emotions to an audience. It unlocked the door to my imagination.
Sydney: How long did you take the mime classes?
Ivan: I continued for two years at the studio. But I continued my studies in mathematics and I had no plan to become an actor. I was aiming to enter the technical, math institute.
My aunt sent my mother a news article saying that the acting academy had opened a new section for pantomime. I signed up. After a year I realized I needed more education to become a real actor, so I took an exam to go to the Drama School, and I’m still learning…
When I went to the Academy (National Academy for Theater and Film Arts), there were lots of people who grew up in artistic environments. But it was all new for me.
Sydney: How you are still learning? By taking acting classes or being coached?
Ivan: Continuing education is like that of a doctor. Before playing a movie or theater part, you must do research on the part and learn — to drive, to train horses, to learn something new.
For example, in a recent film, I played a shooting instructor. In peacetime, people go to places where they teach and you can practice shooting. In the movie, where half the action takes place at this spot, I propose which gun to learn with, and I show the customers how to work the gun. I had to learn all that, by visiting such a place, observing, learning to shoot and researching guns and so on.
Film acting is the most interesting profession. You finish one film and if you are lucky, they invite you to read a new script and to audition and you start to think about how to reach out to people and research the subject. You enter a creative world, you escape from yourself.
It’s boring all the time to have to be you and that’s why it’s good to create a different and new character, a different you.
Of course, one the other side, it is very hard to be an actor because it takes a lot of energy. And, eighty percent of the time, I am a theater performer and spend almost every day in the theater.
The theater system in East Europe is different from that in the west, in London. There they play the same play every day for one or two months. Our system is repertoire. So one night I may play Hamlet and the next night Uncle Vanya and then Cyrano de Bergerac. During the day I must rehearse something new for the night’s play.
Sydney: How did you prepare for this movie, about a self-centered jerk of a father?
Ivan: Well I have been a father for 11 years already. For this role, I was not the father but being a father, I know you are never prepared to be a father.
There was not much preparation. Ivan Savov, the father, and I were friends for many, many years. Maybe they chose us because we resembled each other, but we already had a connection and we often joked with each other and knew each other.
In Bulgaria one has great respect for one’s father. You cannot say things against him to his face. I could have been angry at my father, but I could not be sharp with him because he raised me, and he taught me to show respect for him. So, the story was built on that fact.
It’s easy to fight with the father, to say, ‘you’re crazy!’ and the son does finally say it, but he must figure out how to protect him and not punish him for his state of mind. This is not a ‘real’ story, it is a story of the imagination.
It is, however, based on real events. The father of the director is really an artist, well-known and crazy like every good artist. Her mother was a real actress who just died.
But the journey, like when they throw the pumpkins out at the gypsies after stealing their horse and wagon was created by the director and actors behind the scenes. The little line with the slippers was not even in the script. It happened at the beginning when I was driving the car, I noticed I still had on my slippers. The director said, ‘just continue’ and so every day I was wearing the slippers and every shooting day they changed the slippers two or three times because they wore out easily. So, working together collaboratively can mean making up stories as we go.
Sydney: I read that you are married to the actress Margita Gosheva and you have a son. Do you think your son will become an actor too?
Ivan: We don’t dream of him becoming an actor. But a funny story about that is that we three were playing mother, father, and son in a TV series directed by the same director The Father. It took place in the summer on the Black Sea and his mother, my wife did not want to leave him at home, and so he got the part in the series. But he doesn’t want to be an actor especially. It was just his summer activity. My wife and I teach a children's acting class and our son joined it so as not to have to stay home alone. And so he auditioned and got the part.
But acting is not a matter of learning, but of talent. We don’t yearn for him to become an actor; we just want him to be happy doing whatever he chooses to do.
In fact, I tell him how hard it is to become an actor and I ask him please don’t become an actor.
Sydney: I totally get that. Hollywood is filled with actors wanting to break into film or TV. But only about 2% make a living wage.
Ivan: To succeed is a matter of chance among thousands. Maybe it’s easier in a smaller country like Bulgaria, but it never over. And in Bulgaria, it is not well paid. You must have great luck to become a Star.
And then, the problem is, when you become a star, you start having to play in shitty movies (pardon the language). Is that what you dreamt about when you wanted to become an actor? Many movies are made just for the money. Some few great actors get consistently great roles….
Ivan: From grades 1 through 7, I attended a Russian school and I only learned English recently, so please excuse me for my limited English.
Sydney: Not at all, your English is excellent! Thank you for taking this time to speak with me!
International sales agent: Wide
FILM REVIEWS: Screendaily, Variety ,Cineuropa, Hollywood Reporter
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