Seattle filmgoers will have a chance to check out the Bulgarian feature “Don’t Close Your Eyes,” with a screening slated for the SIFF Film Center on Saturday, April 13th at 1:30 PM. The pic, which recently snagged Best Foreign Film honors at the London International Film Festival and held the top spot at the Bulgarian box office for four weeks, is a two-pronged narrative exploring themes of faith and spiritual reckoning. The screening will feature a post-film Q&A with the film’s producer Bogdan Darev from the Seattle-area production company, Itchy Rodent Films.

Directed by Nikolay Egermann, “Don’t Close Your Eyes” is a dual-timeline drama that explores questions of faith, trauma, and the threads connecting lives across generations. The story follows two men — Peter, a teenager in 1980s Bulgaria, and Paul, a present-day priest — as they navigate spiritual and personal crises in vastly different eras.

While the characters are not related, the film draws parallels between their struggles, using Bulgaria’s visually textured religious settings — churches, monasteries, and rural landscapes — as a backdrop.

The film marks a significant project for Itchy Rodent Films, co-founded by Benjamin Ross Johnson and Bogdan Darev. Darev, who emigrated to the U.S. in 1995 at the age of 18 couldn’t return to his homeland for 23 years due to green card restrictions. That experience informed his 2018 documentary “There,” which chronicled his emotional return to Bulgaria. While “Don’t Close Your Eyes” continues on its world tour, the team at Itchy Rodent Films also has another documentary (directed by Darev), “Spoke,” about a cancer activist and cyclist, currently making the festival rounds.

Tickets for the April 13 screening at SIFF Film Center are available now.