The director of the tape is the famous Bulgarian director Nikolay Rusakiev
On April 26, 2024, at 6:00 p.m. in the Great Hall of Veliko Tarnovo Municipality, the second premiere of the documentary “On the Other Side” will take place – a different story about the war in Ukraine, filmed in Russia, Donetsk and the newly conquered territories.
The screening is within the framework of the visiting international “Sofia Film Fest”. Entrance is free. The action in the film takes place in the month of April 2023.
Journalist Martin Georgiev was admitted to the other side of the front in Ukraine. He had already gone to Odessa, Nikolaev and Kiev at the beginning of the war, when all the Ukrainians were fleeing in the opposite direction. And even then he asked to see the other side – Russia, Donetsk, and why not Mariupol.
Since Martin is a journalist from a NATO member country — declared an “enemy state” by Russian President Putin — his admission there seemed impossible.
But exactly one year after the start of the conflict, he received a visa and accreditation, after which he spent two weeks “on the other side.” This makes him possibly the only journalist to have been in both Ukraine and Russia while they were at war, and to have two military credentials. Moreover, Martin Georgiev was certainly the last foreigner to visit the headquarters of the Private Military Company “Wagner” before Prigozhin’s riot and his subsequent death.
The first 2024 International Film Festival Best Film Awards rated in the US IMDb ranking honored “The Other Side” with the prize “Best Documentary Feature”. The second distinction is in the absolute GOLD category, where the film has an honorary award. “On the Other Side” won the award in competition with 20 other film documentaries from around the world.
The Liverpool International Independent Film Festival “sifted” 1,300 films from around the world and placed “The Other Side” in the final. It turned out that this is the only Bulgarian film in this competition.
The Bulgarian documentary was also selected for the Canadian Oscars and is expected to receive at least a nomination for an award from the Toronto Film Festival.
Martin Georgiev has over 20 years of experience in electronic and print media. He is currently a correspondent for Nova TV. In 2017 and 2019, he was on the front line during the anti-government protests in Bucharest, which gathered over 250,000 people in Victoria Square in just one evening. Reflects the anti-Bulgarian protests on the front line and in Skopje. He was nominated for the “Sveti Vlas” television awards in 2021. He is the recipient of the “Golden Feather” award of the Union of Bulgarian Journalists for 2021. He is the author of documentaries. Among them, about the missing aviation of Bulgaria, about the readiness of the Bulgarian Army for war, as well as a film about the deplorable state of the BDZ. He also developed a theme for the new red line of the new Cold War after Finland’s accession to NATO.
