Logline:

One life-changing day for Nora, a teenager whose gift is to perceive the world through sound. After a fight with both her brother and mother, a Balkan folk singer, she runs away from home to face the sometimes harsh reality.

Synopsis

 “Nora’s Music House” is a coming of age musical drama.

Set on an intense spring day in 1999, Nora (17), with the unique gift of hearing and seeing the world around her with the colors of rhythm and sound dreams of becoming an electronic DJ. Secretly selling marijuana cigarettes to earn extra money. She never leaves home without her recorder, on which she records every sound that inspires her. Her mother Reni (37) a pop folk singer with a fading career, is invited to sing at a pop folk club and Nora has to accompany her.

As Nora gets invited to play her music in a techno club the same evening and tells this to Reni, a heated argument follows, Nora runs from home and the events spiral down. At dawn she gets to have her concert at the ORPHEUS. A melancholic electronic music concert.

Director’s Statement

“Nora’s Music House is a techno-musical; a coming-of-age drama about a teenage girl who has a unique gift for music and sound. It takes place an intense about 30 hours in 1999 in Sofia, Bulgaria. Nora’s interactions with herself, her family, her friends, and her first sexual partner are at the heart of the story. The focus is on the mother-daughter relationship and how it influences a young girl’s coming of age. Music plays a central role in Nora and her family’s emotional journey and growth. Music is also used as a dramaturgical approach to tell the story of Nora’s worldview, but also of Bulgaria in the late nineties. Much emphasis is placed on the contrasting presentation of two different musical genres: techno and pop folk.

The film will present an important transitional period in Bulgarian history, focusing on various key elements, including the mafia, skinheads, pop folk and especially the electronic music scene. In 1999, much of humanity was awaiting the coming of the Apocalypse and the collapse of all technology. The dramaturgy of the film uses many details that will send the viewer back to that time: a phone booth, a pager, tamagotchi, the inflation of the Bulgarian lev. In this way, we strive to create an authentic environment.

It is important to present this history now because this period is crucial in shaping the present. At that time, children were growing up with more freedom. The use of telephones and the internet was much more limited, and making real social contacts was easier. But the lack of understanding of the other and racism have been a fundamental part of Bulgarian society since then. Nora’s story is still relevant as a modern girl faces the same difficulties in her coming of age process now.

Ilina Perianova – director

Mila Voinikova – Producer

Short Bio of the director

Ilina Perianova in an award winning director/screenwriter from Bulgaria. She holds an MA in “Fiction Film Directing” from Baltic Film and Media School in Estonia. Her BA is in theatre acting and directing, which she has studied in Bulgaria – NBU, France, Denmark. She is developing her first feature film “Nora’s music House” and is in postproduction of a documentary- “Rescuers:dogumentary”.

She is head of programming for the Rhodope International Film Festival since 2023. She is founder of female led production company UgaBuga Art.