
Igor Ivanov Izi
Writing
Biography
Igor Ivanov Izi is a film director and writer, born 1973 in Skopje, Macedonia. He started his professional career in 1993, directing TV series. From 1995 to 2004 he made several short films and documentaries presented and awarded at festivals worldwide. His short "Bubachki" was in competition of the 54th Berlinale and won a Golden Leopard at Locarno Film Festival. In 2007 his first feature film Upside Down was presented at Karlovy Vary film festival and won the Best Director prize at Mostra De Valencia Film Festival. His second feature titled as "The Piano Room" was released in Macedonia on 15th September 2013 and premiered in USA at 50th Chicago Film Festival. The working title of his next full length movie is "The Sugar Kid".
Known For

A historical fiction drama and thriller set in the turbulent period of the late 1930s in the Balkans as a place where high politics, local interests, capital and crime all merge together.
Shadows over the Balkans

Kosta and Ula are a married couple who decide to adapt the family house to a boarding house. Costa's brother, Tony, manages to find funding to open the boarding house. Mile is the eldest brother who is opposed to the existence of a guesthouse with precise rules. Receptionist Jelena is the only employee in the boarding school and is "a girl for everything. Jelena often has conflicts with the Ula because of her sexuality and a spanking relationship with Costa as well as with the guest in the boarding house. Mario is a Croat, a Buddhist. He is a chef at a boarding house who does not know how to cook, there is just because he is Tony's partner. Jelena helps Mario to order food from nearby localities.
Prespav

Summertime. A family of three, a single father, Babis, and his twin children on the verge of adulthood, Konstantinos and Elsa, sail to the island of Poros on the family boat for their holidays. In the midst of swimming, sunbathing and making new friends, Konstantinos and Elsa meet unbeknownst to them, their birth mother Anna who abandoned them when they were babies. This encounter will stir up long-held feelings of resentment in Babis, resulting in a sun-kissed, bittersweet coming-of-age journey for everyone involved.
Kyuka: Before Summer's End

What is Man? “Homo” shows six faces, six phases in cleverly- connected, blackly comic episodes as desperate characters meet unwittingly in a modern metropole in the eternal search for the means to survive, and find some kind of love. The jobless graduate becomes a grave digger, the grieving widow a nun, the priests gamble and gangsters rule the courts. Only the lonely child may find some affection when hope springs eternal.
Only Human

A run-down hotel room, a piano, a maid and the guests who stay there. Life begins, life ends, and lives are changed forever in the piano room.
The Piano Room

A story about Skopje, more precisely its architectural and urban history with a special focus on the modern architecture, which follows the city from the beginning of the twentieth century, to the brief era of brutalism.
Concrete Time

Story about a vengeance, about the secrets we carry and the roles we play.
Three Days in September

A failed circus artist managed to regain his beloved and to pull her from the embrace of her new lover, using the acrobatic skills she once fell in love with.
The Lover

A documentary about the success and history of Rabotnički - the most successful basketball club in Macedonia.
Give Us Back the Bragging Rights

Jan is the type of romantic malcontent who can't find rest, who continually hurts people and gets hurt himself. This dark, raw and uncompromising Macedonian film presents a gloomy testimony of the degradation of the life of the individual and society as a whole.
Upside Down

A short documentary about Macedonian traditional instrument bagpipe.
Bagpipe

What becomes of a young man who lives entirely in his own world? Melancholy and powerful images bring back memories from the boy's past while revealing his contemplation on the present.
Bugs

A documentary film about wrestler Shaban Trstena, the only athlete from Macedonia to win an Olympic gold medal. It tells his life story with all its ups and downs, his worldwide fame and downfall.
Cobra

A short documentary about Macedonian traditional instrument - kaval.
Kaval

An eclectic cinematic collage of mixed temporary contexts, reveals what is in the mind of a young man who lives in a claustrophobic inability to communicate freely with the outer world, because of the visa regime.
The Clock
N.E.P. or The Stones God Threw on the Barricades was made as an independent project by TV Bordoshbagn for A1 Independent Television in Skopje. The film is of an undefined genre and speaks about the Third World lies, which renowned 'well-intentioned' missionaries, founders of certain foundations and institutes, have promoted in the countries of the former socialist regime, especially in Eastern Europe. This project is an outsider's look at the paradox about the secret beauty of power and the submission to that power. N.E.P. is a video reflection on the aesthetics of the transformation of power, looked at from the point of view of the ordinary man in the so-called transitional countries who, after five years of living in 'freedom' still can't understand why the most democratic system of them all – parliamentary democracy – is better than the one before.
N.E.P.

The members of the Macedonian hip-hop crew Chista okolina (Clean Environment) rap some of their tracks a capella.
The Blanket of Aco Shopov

The streets of Roma neighborhoods are full of life; children play in the yards but once the doors of the ramshackle houses are closed, violence reigns. This is a film about women who are victims of their own love, the twisted understanding of tradition and marriage, the life on the margins of society where justice is 'well-behaved' and does not intend to meddle in the marital relations. The various stories of women from different generations, held in captivity by their hopelessness, supported by their husbands' chauvinistic views, promise faithfully that the culture of family violence will persist, be nurtured, and go on...