Development and writing

Ivan Andonov, the film's director.

The film's script is based on Vlado Daverov's semi-autobiographical novel Yesterday. In his novel, Daverov describes school life at the Ernst Telmann German High School in Lovech. He was expelled from the school for chopping up a wooden desk in order to light a stove and keep his girlfriend warm. This scene was recreated in the film.^[1]

Director Vasil Zhivkov came up with the initial idea for a film adaptation of Yesterday, which Daverov accepted. The script was approved by Boyana Film's cinematographic collective; however, Zhivkov and Daverov got into an argument, after which the head of the collective offered Ivan Andonov to become the film's new director. Andonov agreed to do it under the condition that he would be allowed to include some of his own experiences from his student years in the script, in particular his fascination with the Beatles' 1968 self-titled album.^[2] For three months, Daverov visited Andonov's studio every day. When they finished the script, the two broke down in tears as they felt that they had "struck a goldmine".^[3]

Casting

Andonov cast some of his personal favourite actors in the roles of the school staff: Georgi Rusev was cast as Principal Tzonchev, and Nadia Todorova as a cleaner. Andonov was impressed by director Nikola Rudarov's cameo appearance as the cameraman in the 1968 film One Shooting Day, and cast him in the role of the math teacher, Professor Baramov. The role of the English teacher was played by Christine Bartlett, a Scottish teacher who taught English at the First English Language School in Sofia.^[4]

For the roles of the students, Andonov conducted screen tests with many students from the National Academy for Theatre and Film Arts, as well as other students from Sofia. Petar Popyordanov was initially cast as a background character, mainly because of his bad speech; however, due to his improvisations, his character eventually became one of the main characters. Georgi Staykov was the first young actor to join the cast. Andonov had previously cast him in a small role in his film Dreamers (1987), and he even considered casting him as Ivan, the film's main character, but in the end decided to give the role to Hristo Shopov. He envisioned Ivan as "mysterious", which was the complete opposite of Staykov's personality, which is why gave him the role of Rostislav. A drama student from the Academy was initially cast as Dana; however, Daverov insisted on Sofia Kuzeva playing the role, to which Andonov agreed.^[4]

The Plovdiv Theological Seminary, where most of the film's scenes were filmed.

The role of Ivan's father was given to the Boris Lukanov, an actor at the Ivan Vazov National Theatre. The scene, in which he explains to his son why he was fired from the position of editor-in-chief at the magazine he worked for, was cut during editing, as it did not correspond to Andonov's creative vision. This is the only scene filmed outside the school grounds.^[4]

Filming

Andonov insisted that the actors do not rehearse at home. They visited his studio daily according to a schedule, where Andonov worked with everyone individually, and then brought them together to rehearse some of the scenes.^[5][6] Most of the scenes were filmed in 1987 in the building of Plovdiv's Stage Arts School (now Plovdiv Theological Seminary).^[7]

The students' dormitory set was in Sofia, and the drowning scene was filmed near Lovech, where a 17-year-old student at the German Language School drowned in 1965. While filming the scene, Staykov was caught by a current and disappeared for a long time. The film crew panicked, with some crew members jumping in to save him. Staykov was in good physical shape and escaped the current.^[3]