Staying true to my vow not to work weekends, I decided to be spontaneous and joined my wife to watch the entire four hour event.

A Bulgarian singer won it for the first time ever which is a milestone in itself for our small and fiercely creative country.

In 2015 Dara appeared on the X Factor Bulgaria. She was an unknown artist from the seaside city of Varna. She was 16 and finished 3rd. Here she is performing back in the day…

We fast forward to 2026 when Dara almost quit after online hate in Bulgaria unleashed when she was chosen to represent our country at Eurovision 2026. Sadly, as in the US, Bulgarian society is very polarized. But she soldiered on and won the judges votes (seven judges in each of the 35 countries vote). She also won the audience votes.

Fun fact: Dara incorporated treadmill running while singing into her preparation to build stamina for the intense live “Bangaranga” Eurovision performance.

Her win made me reflect on showing up and what that means. That unless one shows up for what they believe in, purpose wanes, we become prisoners of wishful thinking, regret settles in.

Showing up every day allows for artistic vision to bloom.

Showing up nudges the craft to surprise the artist.

Showing up is the performance, the song, it is passion, union and friendship.

Let showing up do the talking. The rest is noise.

Congrats to Dara and her Team!

Share

For those of you who wish to dig deeper, I did some more research on how many artists came together for this performance and song. Why? Because the commitment to your craft and connecting to an audience, which is what wining is, require an artist to show up day after day in real life.

Keep showing up!

Bogdan

P.S. Stay tuned for next week’s post on how a dream I had in June of 2025 helped shape my new film SPOKE!

“Bangaranga” is officially credited to four songwriters, all of whom are also credited as composers:

• Anne Judith Wik (Norway), a Norwegian songwriter associated with the Dsign Music team, known for writing for international pop acts.

• Cristian Tarcea (Romania), a Romanian producer-songwriter better known as Monoir, active across Balkan and European pop.

• Dimitris Kontopoulos (Greece), a Greek composer and producer with a long Eurovision track record for several countries.

• Darina Yotova “Dara” (Bulgaria), the performer, credited as both songwriter and composer, bringing her own phrasing and Bulgarian pop sensibility to the track.

Production was handled by Cristian Tarcea (Monoir) together with Dimitris Kontopoulos, who is credited as co-producer under his alias Starchyld X. This cross-border writing and production team helped shape the song’s blend of Balkan rhythms, a big pop chorus, and EDM-adjacent drops that stood out at Eurovision 2026.

Although the writing and production team is international, the entry was submitted by Bulgarian National Television (BNT), and “Bangaranga” was chosen through a national selection where a jury and public vote picked the song from three options prepared by Dara with an international team.

The live performance’s visual identity and staging were shaped by Fredrik “Benke” Rydman, hired as creative director for Bulgaria’s 2026 entry. Rydman was already well established in Eurovision circles, having previously staged Sweden’s 2015 winner and Switzerland’s 2024 winner, as well as serving as creative director for France and Albania in 2025. He brought a cinematic, story-driven approach to “Bangaranga,” partly inspired by the Bulgarian kukeri tradition of driving away evil spirits through noise and movement.

Because Rydman is based in Stockholm, Dara traveled there to work with him and his team before Vienna, refining the staging, choreography, and costumes. Rehearsal clips and audience accounts from Vienna emphasize how the staging maintained constant motion through dancers, LED visuals, and dynamic camera angles, while still protecting Dara’s endurance across three minutes of live singing and dancing.

The result: “Bangaranga” won the Eurovision Song Contest 2026 in Vienna with 516 points and a 173-point winning margin whihc is the largest in the contest’s history.

Sources & further reading:

• Bangaranga — Wikipedia

• Bulgaria in the Eurovision Song Contest 2026 — Wikipedia

• Creative director for Bulgaria revealed — That Eurovision Site

• Natsionalna Selektsiya 2026 — Eurovisionworld

• Meet Dara, the singer representing Bulgaria at Eurovision 2026 — The Independent

Leave a comment

I’m deep at work on my next post called “The Dream” due in a week. Until then, enjoy The Forbidden Files, learn about PCP and read a few books…for joy!

Reading Online

The Forbidden Files is by far the one newsletter that has truly impacted my perception of the world. Here is how the author himself frames it. Lowercase is intentional and how he writes:

raw psychology. neuroscience breakdowns. human behavior patterns most people never notice.

weekly posts on consciousness, persuasion, the nervous system, why you do what you do.

no fluff. no motivational bullshit. just mechanisms.

The Forbidden Files

The Psychology Of Pretty Privilege

in 2014 a man named jeremy meeks got arrested in stockton, california. (man on the right in the photo above…

Read more

3 months ago · 537 likes · 29 comments · ixcarus

Listening To

The Diary Of A CEO: Astute, curious and sincere host in Steven Bartlett. The episode below opened my eyes. I applied the PCP model to my daughter in college who called stressed this morning.

The PCP Model

The model follows a three‑step PCP sequence in the brain: Perception → Context → Permission.

1. Perception: You first shift how someone views a situation (e.g., acknowledging their feelings). Once we accept a certain frame, our brain loads a behavior script for that context and runs it mostly on autopilot. Hence, shifting perception disrupts the autopilot program.

2. Context: Reframing what the situation “really” means so your words resonate rather than dictate. Once perception shifts, you alter the situation’s frame so different behaviors become “normal” or “expected.”

3. Permission: With perception and context in place, the person feels socially and internally allowed to act in ways they normally wouldn’t have thought of.

How it applied to my daughter:

1. Perception – “You’re not wrong for feeling this.”

• I validated her stress and desire to be out on a Saturday in a colorful European city, instead of pathologizing it. That told her nervous system: “My reaction makes sense; I’m not broken or lazy.”

• In PCP terms, the situation changed from “I’m failing at college / self‑discipline” to “I’m a normal person in a vibrant city in spring, and this pull is understandable.”

2. Context – “You’re in a life‑design moment, not a moral trial.”

• I then asked her: “What if you write your priorities on paper so you can see them every day and make better choices for your well‑being?” This implicitly re‑defined the situation.

• The frame is no longer “Saturday vs. responsibilities (guilt frame)” but “This is a tiny design session about your life, where you decide what matters to you (agency frame).”

3. Permission – “You’re allowed to choose and experiment.”

• Within that new frame, my daughter now has permission to:

  i) Acknowledge “fun with friends” as a legitimate priority alongside study and health.

  ii) Use a paper‑and‑priorities tool without feeling like she’s “being controlled,” because it came as an invitation rather than a demand.

Share

Reading For Joy

I started reading again after doing yoga one Saturday morning in February. I was in some weird, inverted pose when my eyes landed on a book. In that moment it hit me: I was reading books “in order to.” In order to become a better version of myself; in order to soak up information; in order to be a better communicator. To be better this, and better that.

So in the middle of morning yoga, I said “fuck it” and decided to drop reading “in order to” and to start reading FOR JOY!

Since then I’ve read these books:

• HOSTAGE - over one February weekend, I read through this eye witness account by Eli Sharabi who spent 491 days in Hamas captivity. Despite losing his wife and two daughters in the massacre, the author manages to show the human side of his captors.

• SWORD OF FREEDOM by Yossi Cohen, a former Mossad director. A deep and insightful dive into Israeli’s mindset.

• NEVER LEAVE THE DOGS BEHIND. A memoir by influencer Brianna Madi. I was shocked to learn about “snark subreddits” created specifically to gossip about, criticize, and often harass influencers and other public figures. These forums often slide into rumor‑spreading, body shaming, doxxing, and organized harassment campaigns against influencers.

• HUNGER (1890), by Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun, follows a young writer who starves through most of the novel, suffering intense mental and physical setbacks as he simply tries to survive. Told in the first person, the narrative is unapologetic in its deft and often morbid tone. It elicited deep compassion in me as a reader

I’d love to hear what you’re reading online, listening to or reading in paperback…

Leave a comment

Wishing you a happy start of your week!

Bogdan

Those of you who have walked the road with me since 2018 might remember the cute Filmabee avatar. It got a design upgrade and it now calls this publication—home.

Filmabee Studios is expanding its impact. We cannot wait to share the joy and tribulations of this journey, long as it has been, and all the films that we have prepared for you and the world. We started with:

• “There” in 2018

• “Kaval Park” in 2022

• “Don’t Close Your Eyes” in 2025 marked our entry into the narrative film space. The film is now playing internationally, on Bulgarian TV, and will eventually be on streamers.

• “Spoke” is my newest documentary which we just completed.

• “Kid with a Movie Camera” is film director Micah Knapp’s life documentary story thirty years in the making, now in post production.

• “The Mermaid Ward” is another very special documentary in post production.

• “The Monsters We Make” will be my narrative feature film debut, and is now in development.

“The Monsters We Make” has been in development at Filmabee Studios since November, 2024. We spent 2025 writing the script. I’m very happy to announce that we have officially finished the screenplay and the Filmabee Studios’ Team has moved the project into the budgeting stage. We have decided to film most of it in Bulgaria. Considering how many locations and actors there are, costs to film in the US would have been upwards of 20 million.

Our team in Bulgaria has already put a budget together, and our team in the US is currently finalizing the above-the-line part of the budget. Above-the-line includes producers, writers, the director, and main cast compensation, along with story rights and script development costs.

As soon as we have the budget, business plan and Investor package we start raising funds. But simultaneously, or shortly thereafter we will start to raise funds for the marketing of the film. Usually, indie filmmakers focus exclusively on making their film and ignore building a presence and a strategy to market it. To set us up for success last fall, Filmabee Studios hired marketing director, Nari Fateha, and editor, Anna Kaperska. Nari is also a producer on the film along with producer Micah Knapp (both featured in the photo below).

“The Monsters We Make” cross-pollinates between documentary and narrative storytelling. When people read the screenplay they often exclaim, “This could not be real!” But it is, it was, and it will be because generational trauma bleeds into the present and informs our future. The past is the now.

“I read once that time is not linear. But if time is not a straight line, how can one get a straight answer?” - André, The Monsters We Make

The film is raw, packed with factual and emotional truth while exploring masculine vulnerability. Adapting and writing a real life story for the big screen seemed like the next logical step. My documentary approach has been to seek out the faces and the stories they tell. And I plan to bring this curiosity the narrative filmmaking.

Italian legend Federico Fellini often cast non-actors and people with unusual faces in his films. He molded performances around those non-actors. Their presence signaled the blurring of boundaries between worlds. In essence many of his films feel like documentaries. They capture real people’s emotional and lived truth. There is no acting. Just exploration. The story goes that Fellini loved to ride the subway in Rome and study faces.

“You have to live spherically – in many directions. Never lose your childish enthusiasm – and things will come your way.” - Fellini

Share

Director Sergei Parajanov cast his friends, artists and musicians in his films. When he worked with famous stage and film actors he treated them differently on camera.

“Parajanov’s visual style pushes conventional acting to the background, turning many performers into stylized icons or “types,” which can make even trained actors feel like nonprofessionals placed in tableaux.” - Screenslate

We are not casting the brothers in the film, even though I tried to convince André to play himself. He humbly turned the role down. Living through hell once was enough. I get it. Both brothers are also producers on the film. We will be consulting them for authenticity. In the website photoshoot we employed black and white photography featuring the brothers. The goal was to highlight the truth of this story while establishing a visual language specific to the film. Eventually, our journey will turn into color and a full cast.

The photos were taken by award winning photographer Tseno Tsenov in Seattle.

We plan to invite the producers, the brothers, film department heads and the cast to speak about the process of making “The Monsters We Make.” You’re going to have an exclusive inside look into the film from beginning to end.

“When I was little we lived in a flat. The stairwell was dark... I’d press the light switch. It was on a timer. Down I dashed, three flights, and out to toss the trash... But the light would shut off before I got back inside. Before I could make it home again. - Aria, The Monsters We Make

Keep doing what you love! It matters!

Bogdan

P.S. Check out the film website here.

Leave a comment