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Javor Gardev is a multi-award-winning film and stage director. Gardev has a Mphil in Philosophy from St. Kliment Ohridski University in Sofia, as well as an MFA in Directing from the National Academy of Theatre and Film Arts. He was awarded the Fulbright Prize, which allowed him to pursue specialisation at Northwestern University's School of Communication in the US. One of the foremost directors of Bulgaria, he has staged over 50 theatre performances, including international co-productions. Javor Gardev’s debut feature film, Zift, won nineteen national and international awards and was presented at 54 international film festivals, including the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival (Official Selection “Discovery”). Zift is part of the VOD and streaming slections of the Independent Film Channel, Sundance Channel, Netflix, and HBO Max. Zift was Bulgaria’s official submission for the Academy Award in the Best Foreign Language Film category in 2008 and part of the Official Selection of the 2008 European Film Academy Awards. Upon its release Zift broke the record for the highest grossing Bulgarian feature film in two decades.

 

His stage works were presented on tour in Berlin, Paris, Lille, Bern, Gdansk, Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, Moscow, St.Petersburg, Lisbon, Skopje, Rotterdam, and Utrecht, to name a few. Among the plays he has staged are William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and King Lear, Edward Albee’s The Play about The Baby and The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? (endorsed by the late Edward Albee in Sofia in 2009), Heiner Müller’s Quartet, Jean Genet’s The Maids, Peter Weiss’ Marat/Sade, Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman, A Behanding in Spokane, and Hangmen, Tracy Letts’s Killer Joe, Ethan Coen’s Almost an Evening.

 

Javor Gardev has also directed radio dramas, including The Atoll, winner of the Grand Prix Europe for Best European Radio Drama in Berlin in 1999. He also authored performance art and video art works like Visual Police in 2005. Javor Gardev is a member of the European Film Academy and an affiliated director at the Drama League of New York.