Rangel Vulchanov
Two best friends get involved into the domination games of two mafia bosses in post-communist Bulgaria. Clutching like crayfish to the baits of everyday life, they determine their fates: without the other one knowing, they are manipulated to take seemingly harmless tasks. Parallel to the criminal line in the story, our attention is drawn toward the inner problems of the characters, toward the links that exist between everything and everyone. The two friends try fruitlessly to establish a dialogue. A dialogue about relationships, about death, about responsibilities, about the essence…
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.
This film is about an imaginary actors exam. In order to choose the best one the exam jury uses even immoral ways of selecting - spying, making conflicts, humiliating the applicants, taking advantage of its power.
In this comedy, a mathematician is so bored and burnt-out with his career that he rebels, first by crawling under a table during an interminable faculty meeting and then by throwing his telephone away, locking his wife out of their apartment, and running off on his own. At this point, the comedy takes a turn when the rebellious mathematician follows a strange wheel and meets a goatherd who shelters him in his humble abode. Events change from a bit odd to totally bizarre as the mathematician continues on his journey of escape.
A middle-aged Bulgarian is watching the change of the guard in front of the Buckingham Palace. For no apparent reason, while looking, in his mind he gets back to his childhood in the little Bulgarian village, he grew up in. Different rites, different traditions and still he finds something in common. He recalls the people he knew, he feared or admired. He ponders over that life of no brilliance, where people plough, harvest, marry and die, celebrate or grieve. Miracle are also worked, conceived in a unlimited child's imagination. It is the child's perception of the world that helps us to give a meaning to the major questions of human existence.
The sculptor Hristo spends years working on his masterpiece - an enormous metal construction, representing the spirit of a modern era. He lives far away from the noise and hassle, in a self-chosen exile by the sea. His difficult faith befalls Lote - the loving and silent wife of the artist. The anglers of the village are compassionate and they help them. One morning guests from the capital arrive. They want to buy the unfinished art piece at any price. The moment is dramatic. The artist wants to finish what he has started but Lote knows that he is possessed by this piece and he will never finish it. One must decide. Hristo is still not sure. Little Patricia came with her parents to visit the artist. Her look turns into a moral judge for the adults. With pain and suffering, Hristo gives his creation away.
Before going on leave an experienced magistrate assigns to his assistant a case that has been all but concluded. Everything has been proved. The facts are clear: a brutal murder has been committed. The suspect is a young, beautiful girl, who does not deny or remorse the murder. The only thing that remains to be done is to refer the case to the public prosecutor's office. The case is rather strange though. The murdered man had been a criminal blackmailer; the murderess is a timid girl of 17. The young magistrate tries to discover certain vital truth concealed beneath the obvious facts. The girl has pleaded guilty and the bulk of evidence is against her. The only question that has not been answered concerns the motive of the crime. The detective carefully questions the girl to find her real motives. From her story he learns that the girl is real victim. She arrived from the country and due to her naivety ended up in the apartment of a sexual maniac.
After a successful concert, the famous singer Lina Dimova disappears. She travels to the seaside, where she pretends to be mute and lives in the cabin of Manol at the bed of Ropotamo River.
American filmmakers associated with the mafia are concerned about the great success of Bulgarian films around the world. They decided to send a big spy, Jesse James, to Bulgaria. His task is to blow up the film studios. But the Bulgarian inspector Lokum Shekerov is at his post.
Anna, nicknamed the She-wolf, is a young girl with provocative behavior, who actually hides an unhappy childhood without parents and real friends.
A classic noir murder mystery based on the same name detective book by Bogomil Raynov
The first love between two very different characters is the prism through which we are shown the point of view of the film-makers who denounce war and plead for simple human happiness.
An undistinguished drama with a political message that dominates the story, this Bulgarian tale is set during the Occupation of the country in World War II. In spite of their class differences a young working man falls in love with an upper-crust woman and the two have a romantic interlude until the reality of their opposite situations hits him. He decides that the Communist Party and the underground resistance movement are better choices than the woman he thought he loved. As always in the "boy meets tractor" type of propaganda film, personal happiness only lies in championing the underdog.
World War II has long provided fodder for European filmmakers and East German director Konrad Wolf is no exception. In this uneven though at times compelling drama, he examines the conflict involved in a forbidden love. While the war is in full swing, a young German solder is assigned to a unit in charge of deporting Jews to the death camps. He falls in love with one of the Jewish women being deported, an impossible situation which he knows has no easy solution, if any. Alternately philosophical and at the end, at least, quite powerful, this film may still be too downbeat for most general audiences.
The film is a bitter parable about the slow maturing of the idea of freedom - both collective and personal. The characters's deaths are absurd, with no pathos.
The weaknesses and shortcomings in the work of some leaders in the years of the building of socialism are ridiculed.
The action takes place in the last years of the Second World War, immediately before the socialist revolution in Bulgaria. It centers on the life of the middle-class family of Lazarov, which is torn by the sharp political contradictions taking place against the background of the popular struggle against fascism. The father Vitan goes through terrible mental traumas, which are the price, he has to pay for his illusions that in such clashes one can remain neutral and free from politics. The partisans execute the son Boris - a fascist officer, a sadist and a murderer. The daughter Lily is forced to search for her place in the conflict between the representatives of two hostile worlds - that of fascist brother and her husband - a communist and a revolutionary.
The university student Bobchev joins a youth brigade. The commander's council entrust Bobchev with a literacy course for members of the brigade. Velizarov and Monkata arrive in the camp to carry out sabotage. They place explosives on the dam, and attempt to win Bobchev over by means of intrigue. There is a storm: the camp is put on the alert. Everyone joins the rescue work at the dam. After a long struggle with Velizarov, Bobchev cuts the burning fuse of the explosive. The dam does not yield to the pressure of the flood. Everymen sing in Jubilation.
