Bulgaria

Summary:
1668. The jihad is in its heat in the Southeastern Europe. A corps of janissaries is commissioned to the Rhodope Mountains under the command of Karaibrahim. At the time, he was, as all the janissaries were, kidnapped from his Bulgarian family, raised as a Muslim, trained to be a ferocious warrior and convert infidels to Islam in a most brutal way. His cruelty stuns even local Ottoman ruler. He stops at nothing but the resistance of some of the locals is invincible. The struggle is half a success, there are many converts, the death toll is heavy, but all the Bulgarian keep their language and traditions on.Read More »

Spain – the Civil War is raging. Fanny Horn, an English aristocrat looking for adventure, is caught up in the turmoil in Madrid. Here, for the first time, she meets Father Heredia – a monk of the Jesuit Order. Obsessed by her passion for him, she enrolls as a nurse at Peña Ronda, a focus of epidemic typhoid fever, where the Jesuit has set up a field hospital. The monk tries to reject the English woman, but, for a short while, loses control of his feelings. Fanny is ready to take desperate action, but she is once again confronted with Father Heredia’s fanaticism, which is capable of destroying everything around him.Read More »

Quote:
The second half of the 60s. The era of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, the sexual revolution and the rebellion of youth. Those events indirectly penetrate behind the walls of an elite English language high school. The pupils are confronted with conformity and prejudice, friendship and betrayal, the death of a best friend – situations that have molded the generation of today’s forty-year-olds. A nostalgic and realistic vision of life in language schools during the years of Socialism. Friendship, betrayal, love, hatred – they all exist in that micro-society, and the scandals are of the most diverse nature, from the pregnant schoolgirl to the latest Western gramophone records. The impressive acting of the rising stars, the conspiring comradeship of the characters and the hit song, make it a cult work among young viewers.Read More »

Mila, a young pianist, tries to prepare for an audition abroad but her brother, Niki, keeps distracting her with his annoying talent for the absurd. Todor, their astrophysicist father, seems unable to deal with his children’s anxieties. A family portrait during their last summer together.Read More »

DIRECTIONS is a road movie through the dystopia that is present day Bulgaria, a country that remains optimistic, mainly because all the realists and pessimists have left.

At a meeting with his banker, a small business owner, who drives a cab to make ends meet, discovers the bribe he will have to pay to get a loan has doubled. The ethics board that reviewed his complaint about extortion now wants its share of the action. At his wit’s end, he shoots the banker and then himself.

The incident sparks national debate on talk radio about how despair has taken over civil society. Meanwhile, six taxi drivers and their passengers move through the night, each in hope of finding a brighter way forward. “Read More »

A nurse traffics the ID cards of demented patients on the black market of identity theft. Driven by easy cash, and an addiction to morphine, she struggles to keep tabs on her emotional void, and a growing fear of punishment.Read More »

Quote:
This is a story of strange, impossible, inexplicable love between a Muslim Turk woman and a non-Muslim Bulgarian man. Ivan (the Bulgarian) is a pure and romantic young fellow, who gets caught up in the so-called “regeneration process” (when ethnic Turks’ names were forcibly changed to Bulgarian ones). He is responsible for the official seals, which is required to issue the new identity documents after the forced name changes. The schoolteacher Ayten tries to steal the seals, thinking that this way she can slow down the ethnic genocide. Their unexpected and unusual meeting brings these two characters together and makes them fell close, forcing Ivan to take a fateful decision -he must either “rename” Ayten, or face the consequences if he does not. Later on fate bring them together once again. Ayten’s small child is killed during an action by the special forces. Ivan, who has been among the main participants of this action is paralyzed with shock. The security forces decide to “erase” his memory. Ayten is also put in isolation, in the same hospital. From death, which is the only choice left to each of them, comes the common past of Ayten and Ivan. They gradually overcome their animosity; accept their differences and draw towards each other. But will the people around them accept their choice? Happy ending are a rarity in the Balkans. Then Ayteh’s brother returns from Turkey…Read More »

This is a sensitive film about human solidarity filled with humor and poetry.

A young actor with his backbone broken (he is crippled after a bad fall on the stage) is
being treated in a hospital. He is invalidated for good and he wills not to live further on.
He gets acquainted with a 10-year-old boy, Leonid, from the adjoining room. The boy is
spending time in hospital with an arm in a plastic cast. They make friends. In fact, the
actor intends to use the kid to provide him with poison. He starts telling a marvelous fairy
tale. “Yo-ho-ho” – this old refrain of a pirate song is all too familiar. For the sake of the
boy the Actor invents stories about the good buccaneer who is fighting the evil ruler
Alvarez who must be punished for his crimes. Little by little the real people in hospital are
transformed into the imaginary heroes of the pirate stories that the Actor and the child
vanquished by goodness, honesty and self-denial. The boy is fascinated. Gradually…Read More »