Because I Love the Bad Weather
Synopsis: While her husband is on a business trip, Irina secretly goes to her family's seaside villa where she used to spend her holidays as a child. There she meets Boris who she hasn't seen for 20 years.
Is it possible to go back in time to the happy childhood they had? Will the secrets that they reveal ruin or save them?
Director Biography - Yana Lekarska
Yana Lekarska is a writer/director from Bulgaria. She holds an MFA in Film Directing from both Chung-Ang Univeristy in Seoul, South Korea as well as New Bulgarian Univeristy, Sofia, Bulgaria.
Her debut feature film (as writer-director) Because I Love Bad Weather premiered in March 2024 in the International Competition Section of the 28th Sofia International Film Festival and won the Audiecne Award. The film is a recipient of both the Development and the Production funding from the Bulgarian National Film Center.
Yana's latest project as an executive producer - the short film A Summer's End Poem (dir. Lam Can-Zhao, China - Malaysia - Switzerland) received the Special Prize for best short film of the Generation International Jury at Berlinale 2024.
Apart that Yana is a programmer for the Dhaka International Film Festival (Bangladesh) and is part of the selection committee and the mentors of the screenplay lab West Meets East, organized by the Dhaka IFF.
She is also an associate producer of the feature film Ma Ma (dir. John La Raw, 2018, Myanmar, South Korea) as well as exective producer of the Bulgarian feature films Ashes Over Sun (dir. Bo Kalinov, 2020, Bulgaria, Sweden) and Axis of Life (dir. Atanas Hristoskov, in postproduction, Bulgaria, Hungary).
Yana is an alumni from Berlinale Talents 2020, Talents Tokyo 2017, Sarajevo Talents 2018, the Fantastic Film School during the Bucheon Fantastic Film Festival in South Korea as well as the UNESCO Film Production Residency Program organized by the Busan Independent Film Association, again in South Korea, and the workshop FILM+ in Bucharest, Romania.
In 2016 Yana did an internship at Pine House Film, the production company of renowned Korean director Lee Chang-dong, during the script development of Burning (2018, winner of the FIPRESCI prize at Cannes Film Festival).
In the years she has served as a jury to several film festivals (Dhaka IFF, CINEMAPUA Philippines, International Short Film Festival Canton, China, International Kids Festival India).