Best Bulgarian movies

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.

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.

Elena, Koko, Patso and Gosho are high school students in a small provincial town. Koko is in love with Elena. The girl wants to be a singer. She is really excited about the visiting concert of a famous rock band. The event shakes up the whole town giving birth to new love affairs, disappointments and complicated relationships.

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?

Two troubled teens hitchhike across Bulgaria.

Petyo, who is 7 is impatient to start his first year at school. His mom lies to him that his father had to travel abroad and sends him to her parents' village. There Petyo finds friendship with Filip when they both stand up against the Truth Gang.

A small fishermen's village, where people try to survive by bartering fish, is threatened by mobsters. They want to demolish the village and build luxurious hotels instead.

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?

Humanity hides in the deepest, darkest places.

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.

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.

A 17-year-old girl facing harassment finds little support from her artistic, unstable mother. Her grandfather's decision to enroll her in judo teaches her that inner battles precede outer ones.

Svetla, a widow who lost her job recently is living next to the Bulgarian-Turkish border. There are many cases of refugees in her village due to it's location. One day she meets a refugee from Africa and this changes her life.

A heretic film about life outside of the System, made outside of the System. This is a fictional documentary, musical anthropological, scientific magical, eco anarchic utopian journey in a landscape of 8 parts. You're Kaloyan, the sax player. Or Diana, the Gypsy dancer. You journey together through Bulgaria in search of the utopian village Dolphinovo. It's not Sofia, Paris or New York. That's why this story is rural, rustic and polyphonic. It's like a string of painted walls of village houses, folk songs and allegories. However, who is Ivo? And why does he lead you through these winter landscapes a year later?

Three lonely women meet in Krapetz, a village on the Black Sea coast, trying to escape the arrogance and the triteness of "modern" post-communist society. The idyll continues for several days, but is soon destroyed. Crime, violence and corruption reach the three women even in this far, deserted place.

The real story of the journalist Vesela Toteva (in the role is her daughter - Valentina Karoleva) searching for her own happiness during the dynamic and uncertain '90s in Bulgaria. A tale about drugs, fall, fear and redemption.

This is a funny and woeful story, resembling an old Jewish anecdote, aiming to wrap a comical framework around the dark side of life. At the time, the poorest neighborhood of Plovdiv (an ancient town in Bulgaria) represented a unique European recess, a realm of perfect ethnic harmony among Bulgarians, Armenians, Turks, Jews, Gypsies and Greeks. A priest, a rabbi and a hodjah and an Antichrist nicknamed the Boozer are smitten with the same full-bosomed Turkish woman. Along with their rivalry, squabbles and good fellowship a Jewish boy and an Armenian girl fall in love for the first time. The political winds of the era will blow away the idyll separating the 12-year-old lovers. After many years, the Jew and the Armenian woman meet again in a different world.

The film is a kaleidoscope of people, events, feasts, curses, drunkenness and love.

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.

Kesten is a picturesque village on the border between Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece. A French sociologist named Franæois Denis comes to the village to study the risk of ethnic conflict in this part of the Balkans. He finds out that in a place situated only 100 kilometers from Kosovo there are Muslims and Christians capable of living in peace just as they have for hundreds of years. But what is far more interesting to this western visitor is meeting the local inhabitants: Vladimír, who fills all municipal posts from mayor to postmaster, a poet whose verse has never been published and who longs to see Rossellini's The Greatest Love one last time, and a smuggler who is willing to do anything for his mentally disabled brother. It's a fascinating and absurd, though harmonious, world where anything can happen - where even wine has flowed from the water taps...

The 1960s was the time of Beatles and Rolling Stones, the time of sexual revolution. These events have their echo in Bulgarian English-learning school. The school order provokes a protest of the students due to the narrow-minded teachers.

He is well educated, charming, and gallant - a dream for each lonely lady. In reality he is a skillful swindler, who robs naive women. Cheating merchants with guilty consciences are his targets as well. This is the elusive protagonist of the movie. He constantly changes his name, stages his own death, and travels from town to town. His exploits are myriad and his life is an endless adventure. Yet, he remains an amiable swindler, an unrealized actor, whose only goal is make his life more interesting.

In the 17th century, a Bulgarian Christian region is selected by the Ottoman rulers to serve as an example of conversion to Islam. A Janissary who was kidnapped from the village as a boy is sent to force the reluctant inhabitants to convert. The Turkish governor seeks a peaceful solution, but ultimately torture, violence, and rebellion break out.

Vesa, a 16-year old Bulgarian girl, cannot speak. A Turkish fortune-teller predicts that the girl will convalesce if somebody sacrifices his life for her. The fortune-teller's mentally retarded nephew, who comes to hear the prophesy, follows the girl. It is the first time ever that he leaves the desolate village in the Balkan mountains. He faces the hostility and malice of the modern world. His natural goodness overcomes all obstacles. His love for the girl makes him change. His love changes Vesa, who till then has been fraught with malice to everybody. And the moment they touch each other for a first time, the fortune-teller's prophesy comes true. The boy dies. But will Vesa recover her speech?