The Monthly speaks to Thomas Pollock and Andrew McNeill creators of the film Rozkvet – Part 2 – Producing a feature film and being selected for the Belfast Film Festival

How long did the filming and editing take to complete?

Thomas Pollock

We were very lucky with the weather because we decided to shoot the outside scenes first and we had great weather during the summer. We did the interrogation scenes during the winter. After that there were only a couple of scenes we needed to finish to complete the filming.

We probably took from April 2025 when we finished the filming to February 2026 to finish the editing. We had the first screening in April 2026.

How has the response been to the film?

Thomas Pollock

It has slowly been picking up some interest. We did an interview, myself and Katerina, with Film Ireland. The person who had watched the film really liked it and gave us a really good reception to what we had have produced.

Andrew McNeill

I think setting a film in this particular historical period, using the Roma experience to look at war, fighting against oppression, fighting against Fascism, all of which interests me personally, you hope that there will be an audience which will also be interested in those aspects of this film. So it has started to pick up some interest and obviously we are hoping that will grow.

Thomas Pollock

We are starting to get some reviews, there is a review coming from Eye on Film and they think there is a human rights aspect to the film, and they have some good responses to the production values which we are all very proud of and we did spend a lot of time on that,

The film will be shown at the Belfast Film Festival?

Thomas Pollock

We just submitted the film through the normal channels and it was selected and that is another example of the film picking up, slowly, interest and so it will be showing on Wednesday November 4th at the Odeon in Victoria Square.

We are busy promoting the film now and we hope that this will be part of increasing the interest in the film, which, as we have said already, we are very proud of and we think it is worth people taking an interest in as a locally produced independent film.