Reconstructions are being filmed
from the last days of the officer
Christopher Kimber (left) and Simon Kusev arrive on the set of Batulia.
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Christopher Kimber, head of the political department at the British Embassy, attended the first day of filming for British officer Major Frank Thompson in the Sofia village of Batulia. With the diploma was the historian with Bulgarian roots Simon Kusev, who has been studying the life and work of Major Thompson for 33 years.
Costume queen Boryana Semerdzhieva and director Zhezko Davidov
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The major is a member of the British Special Operations Directorate. On January 25, 1944, he jumped with a parachute in the Tran region and joined the Bulgarian partisans, who acted together with the Serbian ones.
The bodybuilders are preparing for photos
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His task is to organize the supply of weapons, ammunition and clothing to the anti-fascist resistance in Bulgaria.
Makeup Tsvetoslava Petkova, who is in the role of partisan Bonka Eshkenazi
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This became possible after the talks in Tehran in 1943, Stalin gave his consent to Britain to arm Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and other Balkan countries.
On May 23, 1944, the Second Partisan Brigade, led by Dencho Znepolski, which also included the Englishman, was defeated near Batulia, far from Svoge.
Major Thompson was captured alive and taken to a school in the neighboring village of Litakovo.
He was beaten and tortured there because locals think he is a pilot of the British Air Force, which these days is bombing Sofia and other cities in the country. He lost consciousness for a while.
On June 10, 1944, Thompson was taken out of the school room and taken with two flocks to the Turkish Fortress near Litakovo. The three were shot there.
So far, the film crew has recorded conversations with the last surviving guerrillas who fought with Major Thompson, as well as documents from the military archives of England and Bulgaria.
And since these documents are few, it is necessary to film reconstructions of the events in which artists and bodybuilders from the village of Batulia participate.
The great mastery of such photos is not to step on the “red line” of props and pranks. The cameraman Emil Topuzov is an experienced enough master to prevent this.
The script of the film is the work of the professor of cinematography from NATFA Marin Damyanov and the journalist from “24 hours” Pencho Kovachev.
In the role of Major Frank Thompson is the third-year student from NATFA Kaloyan Minev, who has a strong resemblance to Frank Thompson.
After the shooting in Batulia, the director Zhezko Davidov will take Kaloyan and his colleague from NATFA Mihaela Goncheva to London, where the episodes with the touching epistolary love between Major Thompson and Iris Murdoch, the future great Irish writer, will be filmed. (24 hours)
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