Tonislav Hristov (b. 1978) is a filmmaker born in Bulgaria, based in Finland and Bulgaria. He directed his first documentary Family Fortune (2008) for YLE and the Bulgarian National Television. His feature debut Rules of Single Life (2011) found its way into both Finnish and Bulgarian distribution, winning Best Documentary at the Sofia IFF and screening at a variety of other fests (e.g. Jihlava IDFF, Sarajevo IFF). Hristov’s next three projects earned him great success and a rich festival career: Soul Food Stories (2013) was nominated for best documentary in the medium-length competition at Amsterdam’s IDFA and also nominated for Golden Gate Award at San Francisco International Film Festival. Love and Engineering (2014) screened at New York’s Tribeca and Toronto’s Hot Docs, opened Visions du Réel in Nyon, Switzerland, and won audience award at Doc Point, Helsinki. The documentary Once Upon a Dream – A Journey to the Last Spaghetti Western (2015) premiered at Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. His documentary The Good Postman (2016) was selected for the IDFA feature-length main competition in Amsterdam (2017) and was nominated for the Best International Documentary at Sundance Film Festival and Shanghai International Film Festival. The Good Postman was also nominated for the European Film Awards 2017. His documentary The Magic Lives of V (2019) premiered at Sundance Film Festival 2019 and continued to Berlinale Generation+ 2019 and to many, many more festivals. In 2022 Tonislav finished his first feature film The Good Driver that premiered in Thessaloniki International Film Festival, 2022 and had a Scandinavian premiere at Göteborg Film Festival, 2023. The film won two awards at Sofia International Film Festival 2023. His last documentary “The Last Seagull” just premiered in CPH:DOX and Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival, ten other festivals have invited the film just in March 2023.
Bulharsko