It is either miracles that happen around Zornitsa Sophia, or "the impossible" simply doesn't get a chance. Here's facts to convince you: Her debut film, Mila from Mars (2004), was shot in 26 days with no more than two-and-a-half to four hours of sleep a night, was also her diploma project, cost about the same as a Bulgarian music video, but within a year had participated in 44 international film festivals, won more than ten awards, and even the battle with Bulgarian film distributors - it became the bestselling Bulgarian film for the past 12 years, in both cinemas and DVD. While most of this went on, Zornitsa was pregnant with her daughter, Nikki-Amrita, but was working on five new projects. One of them was Death and All the Way Back (2005), a documentary about drug addicts recovering in communes without medication; another was Modus Vivendi (2007), a movie about young people fulfilling their dreams. Forecast, her newest project, tells a Balkan story, but not one about war, it is about surf and… love. The idea came before Nikki-Amrita was born. Zornitsa got up 10 days after giving birth and started writing the script. When she presented the idea in Western Europe, she was told there could be no surf in the movie because there was "no such thing" in the Balkans. This, of course, could only inspire her further...

With both Modus Vivendi and Forecast, you appear to want to break stereotypes - stereotypes about the Balkans, about Bulgaria. Why?
Because we must escape the gloomy clich?s we are imposed from outside along with the money we are given. To me, this is a hidden form of censure and it creates clich?s in the same way communism created cliches.

Is then there a special, more messianic mood during the shooting?
I don't know. But several times different people from the team jokingly said: "You've dined on the same table with God", because we had inhuman luck. When we needed sun, we had sun, when we wanted wind, the wind came for half an hour and then disappeared, when we had to sail the sea on a ship, the five-day storm stopped for a day and then immediately began anew in such a way that even the big ships wouldn't sail the open seas. One day, we needed a big fish and Yuri, the painter's chauffeur, went to the fishermen who, for the first time in a month, had caught a big fish, and he announced that this was because God loved me …

Tell us more anecdotes from the shooting period.
Now I just don't know what to say. This is like "tell me a joke". And you forget all jokes. The shooting period divides the two monastic periods - the script writing and the montage - with thunder and lightning… I had a very strong moment when my lead actress, Theodora Douhovnikova, had a car accident, broke a neck vertebra and was immobile in Pirogov. She asked me if I would replace her. I went crazy. Of course, I promised to wait for her. Because I strongly respect strong will and motivation, at least as much as I respect professionalism.

Reading your interviews feels like being injected with a strong dose of optimism. Where do you get it from?
It comes natural to me. I think it is characteristic of people who've been through great difficulties. I believe difficulties disguise important lessons or better solutions to problems. I try not to forget, to be thankful for everything. I believe.

Right after Mila from Mars, you had five new projects on your mind. Do you always work at such a pace?
Well, to me it seems I am being constantly late. And that I haven't done anything. And that at 20-something my favourite directors have already made staggering debuts, while I only figured out what I wanted to do at 30… I constantly feel I am competing, but not with people, my competition is with time. And this means I am destined to lose. Which is discouraging. I am not sure why I continue myself. Deo (actor Deyan Slavchev) told me several times: "Zo, you are not a human, you are a machine." Well, everything coming from him sounds nice, but whether this is good indeed, it is not so clear.

What changed after Mila from Mars? Do you find it easier now to differentiate between what's good and what's bad in a movie idea?
Both then and now I judge things according to my instincts. Some things are harder now, but I seem to grow more confident about others. And it is not that things have gotten easier, but it appears I now trust my instincts more.

You've studied graphic design, typography, painting, advertising, visual art, you've done video installations. Was cinema a natural next step, or you had a magic moment when you said to yourself: "Well, that's it. I am gonna do movies"?
Honestly put, I don't think it's magic, it's just a decision. Maybe not a very radical, but a smooth one, but, why not? The only problem before decisiveness is indecisiveness. The Hakagure code says that a samurai takes a decision in no longer than seven breath-takes. I don't know if that is right, but to me the rest appears a waste of time. And of life.

Is your daughter jealous of cinema?
Yes.

You say that you first learned to manage a team while restoring the church at the Sofia Central Prison. How does it feel to work with prisoners?
The prison managers gave me two prisoner brigades, which of course had brigadiers and I had to tell them what to do. This sounds easy. But it is not. It is good for prisoners to work because two days of work count as three days served in prison. They aren't interested in seeing the job finished. To finish the church I had to A) motivate them for the cause, B) give them a personal example. This is what I learned to do in prison. In the beginning, weeks passed without any progress. I stopped getting down from the scaffold "for a smoke", we had no lunch breaks and this simply didn't go unnoticed. I talked to the prisoners a lot, mostly with their ring leaders. I won't forget one of my brigadiers - Boreto, he motivated his people big time. He gave me a great hand-made picture frame, and in the picture I am on the scaffold, and he has inscribed its back very nicely, with a maximum number of spelling errors. My mother doesn't want to give it back to me. She thinks it's my best photo.

How does it feel to be in a cinema hall, expecting the first reactions of your first audience during a premiere?
Оо, it's death. Twenty-four times a second. Each premiere shortens my life with several years. I have great inner struggles and am very tempted to hide … I reassure myself by thinking that Woody Allen, for example, never sees his movies in cinemas. I am sure he will live to be a hundred, may he be alive and well. But the person who taught me this profession, Lyudmil Staikov, told me that however much we feel we would get heart-attacks, we must hear the voice of the audience, the rhythm of their breathing, understand where we've succeeded and where - not, draw conclusions, learn, grow. From the whole process, this is the most difficult part for me.

Is there a book, a play, which you dream of filming?
Oh, yes. I dream of Dostoevsky and Salinger. There are two books that quicken my pulse and have excited me tremendously since I was a teenager. The books are Idiot and Salinger's four novellas on the Glass family. I hope I will be lucky and film them one day! When I grow up.

Do you think there is male hegemony in Bulgarian cinema?
I don't believe there are sex separations in any profession. You either are a doctor, a director, an architect, or you are not, regardless of your sex. But this profession either is for loners or it turns you into a loner, whether you want it or not, and this is not a very feminine trait. One of the specific things about directing is that many things remain inside you and are part of this lonely journey from the idea, through your dynamic relationship with about 100 people, to this big responsibility, and you have to balance between many pragmatic and emotional concerns. The profession unites very typically female with very typically male qualities: attention to detail and the picture as a whole, perfectionism and versatility, ideas and material, daring and caution.

Is there still a hegemony of the 40-, 50-year-olds in Bulgarian cinema, as you have earlier said?
I no longer feel this clash. The funding commissions appear open to the young, as they are open in neighbouring countries, where it was namely the young artists who made cinema booms. New names and young authors received subsidies during the last sessions of the National Film Centre. I hope everybody wants the Bulgarian breakthrough in world cinema to finally happen. At least the way it happened with the Romanians, despite all differences, like the continuing absence of a Cinema Fund formed by deductions from all tickets sold. ONLY Bulgaria doesn't have this!

What is the good thing about making movies in Bulgaria exactly now?
That it is possible. And that the hour of Bulgarian cinema is still to strike. I believe this.

Is there something positive about having to compete for finances abroad?
The fact that Europe is open to us is positive, of course. My current and next projects got funding from MEDIA, the European Union programme. But my current film is produced with Bulgarian and American money. European producers thought the movie either too commercial or insufficiently dramatic. I have the feeling that they expect us to do only heavy dramas that should necessarily end badly, which creates clich?s (about us and the region). And European clich?s irritate me just as much as America's inclination toward commercialism.
 
Do you have any superstitions, rituals that you perform for writing success?
I don't have rituals, I have something that is not exactly a ritual. I always try to have my new projects coincide with a favourable astrological moment.