New Bulgarian Cinema

Through Georgi (a juvenile) and Itso (an adult), we take a quick glance (about one and a half hour quick) at what happens in post cold-war Bulgaria.

After a night of partying with her friends Lora has to get herself together and attend an important meeting. At her office she finds two packages which contain two mysterious dice. The sides of one of them are all marked with the number two and of the other - with the number five. In the course of the day Lora will have to find out the truth behind the magical properties of a set of six dice. Lora would be betrayed and helped, chased and abducted. She'd fall in love and she'd help a friend deal with a complicated relationship. After this roller-coaster ordeal she'll come out stronger and happier having reasserted the importance of true friendship.

Ivan's best friend, Kamen, is in an American hospital, in coma after an accident. Since he's denied a visa to the USA and can't stay by his side in his last moments, Ivan decides to set off for Bulgaria countryside, taking the camera Kamen has given him. There's a legend in Kamen's place of birth - a small mountain village - that one song could bring people back to life. Ivan starts a journey to find it and record it, collecting a myriad of stories along the way. Will he succeed?

The billy goat has come down to earth with a mission - to prevent people from finding a treasure hidden near an ancient Thracian sanctuary. The trumpet player, Jonah, moves into the remains of his grandfather's house near where the treasure is hidden. In a tunnel under the house he finds a stone with a bird engraved on it and a map with an inscription in Arabic: "To have a house of gold, fall onto the sky and find the twin!" A copy of the same map brings Rumba and Emma to the same place. Rumba is Bulgarian and a passionate treasure-hunter. His wife is American and studies Bulgarian folklore as a way to fight globalization. Rumba wants to buy Jonah's property so he can find the treasure. Jonah, whose flat in town was taken away from him by other foreigners because of debts, is afraid that the newcomers will deprive him of this property, too. A conflict arises between the foreign woman and the trumpet player that is strengthened by Jonah's extreme nationalism. Two more people get mixed up in the conflict: Anani, Jonah's elderly neighbor, and the Gypsy Ivanka, a woman Jonah sleeps with from time to time. Emma and Jonah start out as bitter enemies. They go through a number of ups and downs until in the end they begin to feel strongly attracted to each other.

Two troubled teens hitchhike across Bulgaria.

A 16-old girl runs away from a dangerous man and gets into a faraway village near the border. Soon she finds out the only inhabitants there - nine old men and women - make their living by growing marijuana and the village is actually an illegal plantation belonging to the man she runs away from. However, she decides to stay there and nothing remains the same. A girl is afraid of her past, both disgusting and attracting her. She is afraid of her present, both suffocating her and giving her wings. And she is afraid of the future as it projects both her nightmares and her dreams. This film is about the only 'bullet against fear' - love.

Moth is freed on parole after spending time in prison on wrongful conviction of murder. Jailed shortly before the Bulgarian communist coup of 1944, he now finds himself in a new and alien world - the totalitarian Sofia of the 60s. His first night of freedom draws the map of a diabolical city full of decaying neighborhoods, gloomy streets and a bizarre parade of characters.

Dona, Lukrecie and Tana - three women of different origins and destinies, whose stories unfold at different times. The tale of the Romany woman Dona begins in the 1960s. The only assets this beautiful and vital woman has are her three children fathered by different men. In order to secure a livelihood for them, she moves in with an older, but disabled man, who turns out to be a pervert. Ten years later, the ambitious Lukrecie is trying to avoid employment in the village. After she becomes pregnant by a prospective suitor, she meets an attractive young man who offers her a life abroad, something she had always dreamed of. Lukrecie resolves her situation in the most appalling way. Tana, the wife of a prosperous businessman, vainly longs to have a child. On the advice of a friend, she goes off to a spa, whose miraculous reputation is attributable to a skillful masseur. Her husband, however, is unmoved by the joyful news. Three stories offering three insights into the tragic outcome of relationships between men and women, which give rise to both longed-for and unwanted children.

At the airport, Slavi tells his life's story to a young customs officer. As children, Nelly promises Slavi to marry him. The two teenagers are passionately in love with each other but after some time Nelly falls in love with another guy. Slavi takes up drinking and gets into trouble with the Bulgarian militia (police) because of his family background. This is when he decides to defect to the West. After staying at a refugee camp in Austria and another desperate love, he sets out to the United States. There Slavi makes some new friends who help him buy a truck. He hits the roads of America, where he comes across an Indian who sells him an arrow. The vendor tells him this amulet will bring his love back. Eventually, Slavi comes back to Bulgaria, where communism has collapsed. His beloved Nelly lives alone with her daughter. One day Slavi meets her again...

The story of Alex, who, with the help of his charismatic grandfather, Bai Dan, embarks on a journey in search of his real self.

Two very similar families are settling in two identical houses in a new fashionable neighborhood built near a complex of panel-apartment buildings. The couples are in their forties. The husbands are moderate professionals and the wives are housewives without children and with firmly fixed habits. Step by step they find out how similar they are and step by step they come to hate each other. The more they strive to be different and the more they fail, the stronger their malice and their lust to harm each other grow.

TILT is a love story set against the backdrop of the changing political and social environment in Europe in the late 1980s and early '90s. Can this love survive the challenges of emigration, a violent homeland and immoral social atmosphere thanks to a gang of adventurous friends?

A young man has trouble communicating with people and is seeing a shrink. He falls in love at first sight, then meets three friends and joins their small community. The four youngsters naively decide to make some easy money by blackmailing an elderly woman. Little do they know that a stranger with a shady past and problematic present will turn their lives upside down. A story about love and despair, hope and disillusionment, revenge and revelation.

Three young girls try to flee from unemployment in the country: they arrive in the capital city of Sofia to look for a job and a different future. The three of them try to survive, fighting a hostile reality which threatens to break their innocent and bright ideas of life, imposing on them its vicious morality. One of the girls does break and becomes the love-toy of a pimp. Prompted by her betrayal, the second one gets involved into a love triangle and attempts suicide. The third girl puts up a struggle for her closest friends' redemption.

Operation Shmenti Capelli is one of the most unique filmmaking stories in Bulgaria during the last twenty years. The long awaited eccentric comedy is a personal dream of popular Bulgarian actor Vladislav Karamfilov-Vargala. The title is based on the idiomatic expression "shmenti capelli" characterizing actions of people who like to shuffle and bamboozle others with superficial commitments. Karamfilov choose it as a metaphor for people with huge economic and political power. The funny comedy incorporates a tragic story in which Karamfilov plays two roles: the Big Guy and the Little Guy. Big is tied to the Mafia and the secret services. Little is an unemployed teacher, squeezed and crushed by the system, which stops his heating and electricity, has his home emptied by a bailiff, and uses him as a tool in a game.

A concert to celebrate Bulgaria joining the EU is being planned at the Embassy in London and it is the job of VARADIN, the new ambassador, to ensure the Queen attends. But with corrupt staff, criminal gangs operating out of the kitchen, falling in love with a stripper and a little misunderstanding with a PR firm that provides look-alike royalties - his simple task turns into a chaotic nightmare.

Follows the parallel stories of a number of characters who are trying to change their lives via the Internet or are simply having fun online.

In this romantic drama featured at the Cannes Film Festival, a couple, Sophia and Daniel, finds their passionate romance taking a shocking turn when they visit the Bulgarian seaside. As they enter a mysterious Black Sea island, the couple's true passions are challenged in a way they had never expected.

This is a story about a woman, but not completely a woman, because she is funny and plump, because she is a comedienne and being a female comedienne is very difficult work. During the whole time, the comedienne gets in the way of the woman and the woman # in the way of the comedienne. In fact, nothing in the life of this woman is 'completely'. She is an actress, but not completely. She is playing the role of her life, but not completely. In the end she dies, but not completely.

A story about Bulgarian musicians, making a tour of Europe. In the morning they had a matinée in Graz and at nigh they are supposed to have a gala in Vienna. Fly by Rossinant is a musical incorporating opera and silent movies elements.

Romance and political drama tight in an adventure, the "Forecast" tells a story of a Balkan conflict with a happy ending. Yes, there is one.

The story of a Summer shared by six young people. It all begins with their escapes from the bleak and dreary City. Each one of them escapes East of Hell... to the point farthest away, the sea coast, a clean and pristine beach. The clean beach brings them together and reopens the prospective of hope to them all. But is such an escape at all possible?

A Frenchman falls in love with a hot temper Bulgarian village girl. Following the call of his heart he starts looking for the village where she lives without knowing the character and the language of the people living there.

Corridor #8 is a mosaic "non-road" film capturing the moods, prejudices and the hope of its characters who live along a non-existent Balkan road, "far away, so close" to each other. The road passes through the countries of Bulgaria, Macedonia and Albania and is also a huge EU infrastructural project meant to link the Black and the Adriatic Seas, already a decade in the planning.

A small town and its hopeful citizens are about to embark on a bright new journey. Massive rusty cranes, foreign investors, and the joyful chants of cheerleaders carry the dream of a great nuclear future. Disturbed only by gigantic stinging mosquitoes, the townsfolk celebrate the atomic hurray by engraving the nuclear power plant logo on buildings and soup bowls. Amidst the apparent atomic prosperity, lies a past that no one wants to remember. An island holding terrifying secrets. Stories of shocking and horrible crimes loom on the city just like the dark clouds of mosquitoes descending on its citizens. A world instantly transformed by ideologies, regimes and dreams of economic prosperity. The tales of characters whose lives intersect in a sinister past, nuclear future and the stinging mosquitoes flying through time, sealing their fate together. From the team behind the IDFA Silver Wolf award-winner "Georgi and the Butterflies".