“Family Portrait of the Black Earth” is a richly layered, stealthily emotional story of a doddering but loving husband who sets out in search of a replacement breast when his wife loses one to cancer. The gorgeously animated Bulgarian film, by director Ivan Popov-Zaeka and based on a short story by Yordanka Beleva, combines innocent-seeming images with real human tragedy and elements of magical realism.
It is about the absurdity of life — sometimes most absurd when it’s most tragic — but also about perseverance, and love. The lead characters match the insanity of their hardship with a childlike embrace of fantasy, and the universe rewards them for it.
The film will be featured Saturday as part of the Festival Formula block at the Indy Shorts film festival in Indianapolis, and is also available for viewing online.
Indy Shorts, celebrating its seventh year, is one of our Coolest Film Festivals and 50 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee, runs through Sunday. Festival Formula, meanwhile, is a festival strategy service that provides filmmakers with custom, detailed approaches to submitting to film festivals to ensure their work finds the most ideal and receptive audiences. It often partners with MovieMaker, including on our Coolest Film Festivals list.
Popov-Zaeka, also known as “The Rabbit” (Zaeka is a rough Bulgarian translation), is a director and creative with more than 20 years of experience in animation and advertising. In 2013 he founded ROBO Lab, a leading animation and post-production studio that is a producer of “Family Portrait of the Black Earth.”
We emailed with him about combining tragedy and mirth, finding influences in everyday life, and how audiences are processing “Family Portrait of the Black Earth.”
MovieMaker: Can you talk about the initial spark or idea for the film?
Ivan Popov-Zaeka: Yes, I’d love to! We were looking for a moving and powerful storyline that could also be twisted in a funny way and make for a pleasant viewing. In the process, we stumbled across a short story about the unyielding love of an elderly couple that works wonders in extraordinary circumstances set in motion by a terrible diagnosis – breast cancer.
Although the subject matter is rather heavy, I saw an opportunity to tilt the balance in favor of comedy through the character of the elderly man, who’s rather clumsy but also very creative and loving. Another aspect of the original story that we liked is the entrepreneurial spirit of the elderly woman. She finds a way to monetize the fact that one of her breasts is missing, something we exaggerated and made into a separate plotline in the film.
‘Family Portrait of the Black Earth’ and Real Life
MovieMaker: I imagine it’s a much more surprising watch for people who don’t know it’s based on a short story. Is it based on the author’s real family?
Ivan Popov-Zaeka: The film is based on a short story with the same title by Yordanka Beleva, which was recently translated into English and published in the U.S. literary journal Firmament. It’s a purely fictional story but its movie adaptation contains plenty of details and settings inspired by real-life experiences of members of the crew.
The music shop is modeled after the one owned by the art director’s father. The bridge which the train crosses towards the end is а replica of an existing bridge I’ve passed by many times when traveling with my parents as a kid. What’s more, some of the features of the elderly man were inspired by those of my father.
MovieMaker: How did you strike a balance between the child-friendly animation style and the very difficult subject matter?
Ivan Popov-Zaeka: The art direction came naturally. Since much of the action is propelled by a casual journey through the pages of a botany book, we looked through a number of vintage botany atlases and took inspiration from the illustrations in them to develop an endearing and homely visual approach that is associated with books in our childhood homes and matches the warm, hopeful undertones of the story.
So, in a sense, we weren’t trying to strike a balance, but hoping everything would fall in its right place in the frame of the art direction we created. On top of that, the naivety of certain characters and the child-friendly illustrations help the audience connect with the story right away.
Similarly, how did you find a balance between whimsy and tragedy?
Ivan Popov-Zaeka: We decided to tell the story through the eyes of the clumsy and naïve yet kind and loving elderly man, whose actions often set the stage for funny and awkward situations. Also, absurd elements of the original text were made into plotlines, thus balancing the tragical event with entertaining moments.
MovieMaker: What was your biggest obstacle, and how did you overcome it?
Ivan Popov-Zaeka: One of the biggest obstacles we came across storytelling-wise was the depiction of St. Peter at the gates of heaven. We were quite wary of designing a St. Peter-like character, which might come as funny or off-putting to some viewers, so we introduced him as a pair of eyes peeping through a narrow hole in the heaven’s door, a lot like a doorman at an exclusive nightclub.
Production-wise, our intention was to create the final sequence using stop motion and a specially built setting with a toy train but couldn’t quite fit it in the budget and went for 3D instead.
MovieMaker: What kind of responses have you received to the film?
Ivan Popov-Zaeka: So far, the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. The film had its European premiere at one of the major short film festivals – In The Palace, and received a special mention from the jury. It was selected for the Galway Film Fleadh, Indy Shorts Film Festival, Sidewalk Film Festival and the Budapest Short Film Festival, and is in the beginning of its festival journey with responses from more than 50 events still pending.
You can learn more about Indy Shorts here.
Main image: “Family Portrait of the Black Earth.”