“Love should be unconditional” – Ivo

The opening line in Kristina Nikolova’s new documentary is uttered by the subject himself. Bulgarian artist Ivo Dimchev smirks into the audience and says, “This is a question along the lines of To be or not to be? – Coming in the *ss or coming in the mouth?” He jokes there’s no way Nikolova will use that in the documentary, but Ivo gives the impression that what he wants, he gets?

It can be jarring to see someone who is fully themselves in a place that doesn’t fully appreciate who they are. Especially when those people are equal parts strong independence and sincere vulnerability. It can be difficult to see someone operating in their truth, especially when the community around you rejects that truth. Ivo (pronounced “EYE-voh” which he prefers because the other way makes it sound like “evil”) isn’t trying to find a place for himself, he’s creating and taking space wherever he goes. As the star of In Hell with Ivo, Ivo takes up even more space, this time on the international stage.

Starting originally as a contemporary dancer and performance artist, Ivo would rent out studios to showcase his alternative form of art. When Covid hit, the artist began writing music and holding concerts in stranger’s homes. It was a novel idea and one that worked surprisingly well. It’s no surprise that late 2020 moving into 2021 people were desperate for human connection. When asked in the documentary about whether he was scared of the virus, he noted he’s been living with HIV for 14 years, he’s been through it before. In a cheeky song called “Corona” he mandates to “pour some vodka into the virus’s *ss”.

It’s this frank matter-of-factness that either endears you to Ivo, or makes you wary. It’s almost a litmus test. In Hell with Ivo does a remarkable job of showing the journey of an artist who is upfront about who he is and asks for entry into your heart. While there, you already know what to expect – you’ve been told – it’s up to you whether you believe it or not. Nikolova worked on this project for over 5 years and was told from the beginning that Ivo was going to be a tough nut to crack. She replied, simply unworried, that she was the most patient person she knew and approached Ivo with the idea.

“There’s good in the hard.”

She didn’t necessarily have to eat her words though her patience was reasonably tested. She said there were even times they stopped talking completely. It was time and proximity that always brought them back together. In Bulgaria, queer identity lives in a constant state of contradiction. It’s been legal to be homosexual since 1968 yet marriage has been banned since 1990 and same-sex partner protections don’t exist unless you were married abroad. They have had anti-discrimination in hiring laws on the books since 2004, but promoting homosexual propaganda is illegal. It wasn’t until July of 2023 that anti-gay hate crimes and online incitement became illegal and we see in the documentary that it’s done little good.

Ivo was alive in the midst of a lot of these changes, but he existed well before several of them were on the table being discussed. As a young man between 14 and 16, Ivo sent a letter to a Chinese newspaper asking how to get a boyfriend. In a dangerous move, the paper not only printed his letter, but his full name and address. A few weeks later two men came to his door wanting to share the words of our lord and savior Jesus Christ. Ivo was taken in, but soon started feeling guilt for being unable to resist boys. He finally gave up and decided he was gay, though the benevolence of Christ never left him.

Ivo has a beautiful voice that lilts between baritone and tenor in intoxicating ways. A clear, controlled vibrato that you can feel in your bones and an enchanting falsetto are just a couple of traits that define his music. Listening to Ivo, I thought of old school crooners like Dean Martin, then Elvis Presley. Then I thought of Freddie Mercury, David Bowie and more succinctly, Jonathan Rhys Meyers’ Bowie-like character, Curtis Wild in Velvet Goldmine (1998). There is an irreverence mingled with absolute skill. Ivo’s lyrics are poetry sometimes travel into unknown places melodically, but there’s no doubt the music pulls you in.

This kind of soul-bearing art never comes without its drawbacks. Near the beginning of the film Ivo says he won’t speak Bulgarian in the documentary and English will be easier.

“Why should I do it hard?” Ivo asks to which Nikolova calmly responds,

“There’s good in the hard.”

It’s an interesting statement and one that lives in the spine of In Hell with Ivo. We meet his parents; Mom, who says she won’t go to his performances, but listens to him on YouTube all of the time. His Dad says he doesn’t go because he doesn’t want to disturb Ivo. There’s no real investigation into the answer and it leaves the audience both wondering what that means and contemplating how long Ivo has been trying to figure it out himself.

“I love pretentious nonsense. That’s what music is!” – Ivo Dimchev

Instead the conversation switches and Ivo is asking what his parents think of Trump. His dad excitedly says that Trump is going to save America and he read a book all about him. Ivo asks if everything in the book could possibly be true and dad says, “A lie is 70% truth. They wouldn’t have praised him so much if it wasn’t true”. In a documentary about Ivo Dimichev we end up getting some of the greatest insight into the MAGA mindset and its equal parts amazing and terrifying. Dad begins to talk about Trump’s developer father’s business skills and using fake red bricks – calling it a genius move. He says Trump needs to teach the “brothers” to work, then he clarifies “the Black brothers”. I cannot say whether this man has ever seen a Black person in his life, but word, opinion and propaganda travel fast.

Ivo’s parents having far right political leanings isn’t the real issue. The real issue is bending over backwards to defend a man who is actively contributing to the harm of your child and pretending to be ignorant of it. Later in the doc Mom says that Ivo is the love of her life, but he doesn’t believe it. It should be mentioned, this was in response to being asked if she misses Ivo when he’s away. Ivo’s response comes in a separate clip directly after. He says if Mom loves him but didn’t support him when his father was abusing him, or when he came out as gay, then what was love, really? He says love should be unconditional and it’s one of his main take-a-ways from when he was an evangelist.

When your homelife is wrought with acute passive aggression and words that don’t mean anything, pure hate can be almost liberating. We see a performance of Ivo’s and then we see some of the comments left. Most are trolls, or maybe even bots predicting the downfall of civilization because a man sang into a mic. But one is particularly disturbing. Someone has made it their divine mission to rid Ivo of his life and he takes it in stride, but it’s actually terrifying. I wouldn’t blame him if that was one of the reasons he began his tours.

The concept is simple, he will go to your house for free to perform for as many people as you’d like. In return he gets to ask questions and record the answers. In a charming bit, Ivo says he has many questions but he managed to narrow them down to 17… 73. He pulls off the sheepishness in a way that’s endearing and makes the subjects unafraid to open up. We see him in New York and then he makes his way to Los Angeles. It’s here that he adds the question, “Would you rather be in Hell with Jesus Christ, or in Heaven with Donald Trump?”. The answers are… illuminating, but Ivo says he would go to Hell with Jesus every time, because he needs Jesus to survive.

He’s on a conservative Bulgarian podcast where even the man’s intro of Ivo is dismissive and condescending. Before he even gets his premise out, the man is questioning him, talking over him and then doubts his sincerity when he talks about the role of religion in his life. In Hell with Ivo seems to ask if the road to independence is paved with trauma? Part of Ivo’s mystique is wondering how he made it this long. He credits a book called “The Power of Now” by Eckhard Tolle. Ivo says he was tired of HIV and the therapies wouldn’t work with his liver and felt caught between the finality of death and the life of his art.

To lose someone so wholly unique would have been a travesty and the documentary endears the audience to Ivo, flaws and all.

“Generous” – Ivo Dimchev

While the content and subject matter were great and interesting, the format of the documentary could have used a little bit more structure. I’m not against a “day in the life” or “24 hours with” approach, and I don’t believe this needed talking heads or historical context, but the names of the people he visited and larger chirons for locations would have been helpful. At one point he’s visiting music producer Jerry Wonder in New York City. Then he gets on the subway and next we see him in an Uber. It’s not until he visits the next house that it’s clear he’s now in Los Angeles. Additionally, Ivo has a lot of layers which is fascinating but it all felt a bit too much for one 78 minute documentary. If they’d focused just on his parents and the tour, I think it would have been successful, but once we start diving into relationships and band members we never know the names of and a young boy named Alexander that I’m sure is related to Ivo, though I have no idea how, it can muddy up the premise of your film which can then lose focus.

Little things like that are small when looking at the overall picture. My only other concern has to do with the untested boundaries of the film. Nikolova spent nearly 5 years putting this together and in that time became very close with Ivo, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that evolved into her being protective of him. I think the film did a good job of not casting him in a positive or negative light, they allowed him to be who he was, but there were some topics that were brought up and just dropped and I would have loved to hear more about them. There’s a scene where Ivo is ambivalent about having female fans. He wonders where his gay male fans are and there is mention of gay male fans not being able to show up for fear of persecution, which is real, but it’s where the conversation kind of starts and ends.

I wanted to know how it felt to be performing in places where transgender men and women were in attendance along with gay men, lesbians, bisexuals and other fellow alternative artists. When you spend so much time being one of one, how does it feel to be in a recognizable community? The good news is these are gripes I have purely because I’m so invested in this documentary. It has a way of communicating Ivo’s beliefs without sermonizing and it feels welcoming and not spiteful. I loved the music, loved the spectacle and really loved Ivo’s art and point-of-view. As a documentary In Hell with Ivo doesn’t quite hit the mark, but as a timestamped piece of performance art, it’s pitch perfect.

In Hell with Ivo was released through VOD via Bulgarian company – Neterra. The film will release worldwide through Kinema in January 2027.

Score: 7.5/10