'Bulgaria: Invisible Europe' at the Filmoteca

This cycle of Bulgarian cinema at the Filmoteca is focussed on a part of the world that is only now beginning to awaken the curiosity of Europeans, perhaps because until now we were simply uninterested in what was happening in Eastern Europe or because we just didn’t have enough information to become interested.

The cycle ‘Bulgària: Invisible Europe’ at the Filmoteca finishes on the 29th of January and includes thrillers like ‘Dzift/Zigot’, which depicts the absurdity of bureaucracy in the city of Sofia as seen through the eyes of a man imprisoned for a crime he did not commit, a film about the dream of many Bulgarians of heading west (Viktoria), the story of a boy who discovers punk and decides to join in (Podslon) and the work of Youlian Tabakov in 'Tzvetanka', the story of an educated woman who is the daughter of wealthy merchants and who sees her parents destroyed simply due to their bourgeois background.

There is also room for adventure stories like that of a Christmas tree that is taken here and there and becomes the thread linking six stories about the joys and tragedies of human life in  'Obarnata Elha' and for the inventiveness of Batko in the film 'Cvetat na hameleona', which won an award at festivals in Toronto, Thessalonika and Stockholm and which tells the story of a young person who aims to destabilise the regime by manipulating the desires of a group of young people.

The cycle aims to use films to find answers through the images and voices that are coming out of Bulgaria, a special country that is different and yet in many ways the same as ours.