Kristina Grozeva was born in 1976 in Sofia. She graduated from the Sofia State University and for a while worked as a journalist for Bulgarian TV, before she decided to enroll at the National Academy for Theater and Film Arts (NATFA), where she studied
film directing. Her student short films won several awards at international student film festivals.
Petar Valchanov was born in 1982 in Plovdiv, the son of painter Valchan Petrov. Petar graduated art school in his home town in 2000, before moving to Sofia to pursue film directing at NATFA. This is where he met Kristina, which marked the beginning of
a prolific collaboration that would extend beyond their student years into a life of filmmaking, which they created through remarkable loyalty and resilience.
Starting with the TV film “Forced Landing” in 2010, the two went on to write, produce and direct the short film “Jump”, which was nominated for the European Film Awards 2013 at the Clermont-Ferrand ISFF 2013, making it the first Bulgarian short ever nominated
for the prize. The following festival success and distribution deals for “Jump” made it possible for them to independently produce their feature debut, “The Lesson”, for which they had been denied public funding. The film won
multiple awards at San Sebastian, Tokyo, Warsaw, Thessaloniki, Gothenburg, Transylvania, Sofia and many other festivals.
Their second feature, “Glory”, premiered in the main competition of the Locarno IFF 2016, winning the International Federation of Film Societies award. The film has collected 44 international awards since, including, among others, the best film awards
in Hamptons, Boulder, Les Arcs, Arras, Kolkata, Gijon and Herceg Novi.
Kristina and Petar have a 7-year-old daughter, Sibila. They recently finished shooting their third film, “The Father”.