About five or six years ago, Bulgarian filmmaker Ilian Djevelekov realized how easy it was to buy, install and use miniature hidden cameras. Once only used by professional spies and prohibitively expensive, they were now available to anyone and affordable. He soon started thinking of all the possible issues the use of…

As millions of Americans spend their evenings glued to their sets watching presidential candidates debate like it’s a bloodsport, the evening news in Europe continues to document a crisis that shows no signs of subsiding, specifically the enormous influx of Middle Eastern refugees into the Balkans over the last five…

When Stephan Komandarev’s feature The Judgment was greenlighted at the end of 2011, Europe was just starting to see the first Syrian refugees displaced by the civil war in their home country. The day The Judgment was voted as Bulgaria’s foreign-language Oscar submission, Sept. 4, 2015, was at the height of the…

For some reason, Millennium Films chief Avi Lerner likes to drop scoops in the Bulgarian press. That might mean that his revelation to the Standart that he is negotiating with Meryl Streep, Cameron Diaz and Milla Jovovich to be in The ExpendaBelles is news that could be contained within that country, where Lerner…

The parents of a stuntman killed last year in an explosion on a 2nd unit location for The Expendables 2 in Bulgaria have filed suit in Los Angeles Superior Court against NuImage, Millennium Films and individuals associated with the production. The lawsuit filed today alleges negligence in the death of Kun Liu, son of…

Twenty-two years after the fall of communism, the cataclysmic events and their aftermath continue to be on the mind of Eastern European filmmakers. Latest case in point: Bulgaria’s Oscar entry for foreign language film Tilt, a teen love story set against the backdrop of the dramatic changes in Bulgaria in the late…

UPDATE 10 AM: I have now learned that it was a contractor hired by The Expendables crew to trim the shrubbery in front of Bulgaria’s Devetashka Cave that was fined and not the production itself. As for the movie’s producers, I hear they are taking the environmental concerns seriously and met today with representatives…

UPDATE, 4 PM: NuImage/Millennium Films released an update today on the accident that killed one stuntman and seriously injured another last week during filming on a 2nd Unit location for The Expendables 2 on Lake Ognyanovo, Bulgaria. Those men are now identified, and other information is clarified in the statement…