The film won Best Film at the 2020 Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival and the Varna Golden Rose National Film Festival.

The North American premiere of the film will take place in April 2021 at the Santa Barbara IFF, which will have online streaming and drive-in screenings.

“I have been working with Chantal Chauzy from Films2C since the time of Hristov’s 2015 Losers, which won the Golden George at the Moscow IFF, and the Varna Golden Rose award. I am very pleased with our cooperation, which is based on a permanently built trust. I am thankful to her that she introduced Fear to the Santa Barbara film festival and I am happy that the festival selected it for the International competition,” producer Assen Vladimirov told FNE.  

“I discovered Ivaylo’s previous film Losers several years ago as the programme director for the South East European film festival in Los Angeles. I was struck by the way he unapologetically uses deadpan humour to tackle serious subject matter, and how his choice of filming in a beautiful, hypnotic, classic black and white does not deter from telling relevant, contemporary stories,” Chantal Chauzy told FNE. “In the divided climate we live in, where the issue of immigration is as vivid and intense as it is in Europe, I think the American audience will be able to relate to this socially pertinent film and its depiction of the fear of the “other”. It is also very much in our times to show a story about a strong woman who has to fight for herself and stand for her opinions”, Chauzy added.

Vladimirov is negotiating rights for Balkan territories. Pro Film is also the producer of Eldora Traykova’s Before the End, which received the best documentary film award at the national Golden Rhyton festival of animated and documentary films.