Bulgarian actress Lorina Kamburova has sadly passed away due to COVID-19 complications. The 29-year-old cast member of 2017’s Leatherface died as the result of bilateral pneumonia following infection with the virus. Although any death linked to the coronavirus is tragic, Kamburova’s age and the recent availability of the vaccine makes it particularly difficult to take.
Born in Varna in 1991, Lorina studied at the Krastyo Sarafov National Academy for Theatre and Film Arts in Sofia, and her appearance in the Bulgarian-shot Leatherface was just her third feature credit. In the prequel to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, she played the daughter of a local sheriff who falls victim to the Sawyer family in 1955. In subsequent years, Kamburova was a regular fixture in low-budget sequels, from Day of the Dead: Bloodline to Death Race: Beyond Anarchy, and 2019’s Doom: Annihilation, with opportunities likely created by the use of Bulgaria as an economic shooting location.
Aside from acting, Lorina was also part of a singing duo and had most recently appeared in Russian comedy Love and Monsters. She joins a list of entertainment industry figures who have died from COVID-19-related conditions since the beginning of the pandemic, including Mark Blum, Adam Schlesinger and Nick Cordero, to name a few. To date, the deaths of approximately 121,000 people in Russia have been tied to the coronavirus, and about 9% of the population has been fully vaccinated.
While Leatherface isn’t one of the better examples of the Texas Chainsaw series, it does have its defenders and is certainly not the weakest of the franchise, which has a new entry in the works this year. At the very least, the Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo-directed production stays true to the property’s intense tone, and tries to create a more robust character study than the gory silliness that other pictures have attempted. And although Lorina Kamburova only has a brief role in the movie, her frequent appearances in other genre films suggest she would have had a long career ahead of her.
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