Maria Bakalova To Headline & Produce ‘Triumph’ In Her First Bulgarian Movie Following ‘Borat’ Breakthrough

deadline.com:

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 at the 2019 Karlovy Vary Film Festival.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 2014’s The Lesson and 2016’s 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 Bakalova did learn about movie acting, which helped her give the performance in Borat, she owes to