Acting
In the family drama "The Grapes of Guilt", two main themes are intertwined - wine and the guilt that a person experiences in his life. The 12-episode film revolves around the wine industry. It tells the story of a young man forced after the death of his uncle to abandon his seemingly orderly life in the US and revive his winery. His desire is strong, he has no experience and his legacy is desperate - lying barrels, debts and workers who will soon be on the street. Only the wayward winemaker of the cellar can get him out of the mess, but her father turns out to be a hidden partner in the business, whose plans do not coincide with those of the "intruder". Secrets and guilt from the past are about to ruin everything.
A 12-year-old boy manages to flee a Communist concentration camp on his own, through sheer will and determination. All he has in his possession is a loaf of bread, a letter to deliver to someone in Denmark, and a compass to help get him there.
Two trains uncontrollably move towards each other within temporal boundaries of a human life. One of them is taking a genial young man to his unforeseen future; he would marry his beloved; have a son; become a brilliant doctor; do his duty and save the live of enemies of the communist regime; get a 20-years sentence for that. Prison would turn out to be an unbearable nightmare; his wife would eventually give in to the tortures of the authorities and seek divorce; this would mean no one to visit him in prison. 15 years without any news about his child, only a snapshot of his family on which the tree of them are smiling and happy.
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.
A film pioneer, Binka Zhelyazkova was at the forefront of political cinema under Bulgaria's Communist dictatorship. Though she remained faithful to the communist ideals she became an avid critic of the regime and brought upon herself the wrath of its censorship. As a result four of her nine films were shelved and released to the public only after the fall of the regime in 1989, and Binka Zhelyazkova became known as the bad girl of Bulgarian cinema. A provocative portrait that reveals the pressures and complexities that arise when art is made under totalitarianism.
One of the most ambitious Bulgarian projects in recent years, Heights is an adaptation of Milen Ruskov's novel of the same name, published in 2011. The film explores the Bulgarian realities of the 1870s a few years before the war, that would liberate the country from the Ottoman occupation. Directed by Victor Bojinov and adapted by Neli Dimitrova, the story follows Gicho a young man in a revolutionary group led by Dimitar Obshti, a real-life revolutionary fighting against the Turks. After a successful train robbery Obshti entrust Gicho with a special mission: to deliver a letter to Vasil Levski, the country's most famous freedom fighter, now considered hero and dubbed The Apostle of Freedom.
This is the story of Mityo and his son Vasko, who live in a poor area, near to the Bulgarian-Turkish-Greek Border. Mityo had lost everything that has mattered to him – his wife, his work, the confidence of his son, Vasko. In order to get him back, Mityo has to find forgiveness and pay for his sin, done 25 years ago.
Marie, a film producer, returns to her native Russia to find her birth parents. She quickly learns they are dead, and she has inherited their long-empty farmhouse. At the farm, she meets Nicolai, who claims to be her twin brother. Events take a terrifying turn when the two spot a pair of ghastly doppelgangers and the house itself seems to propel them toward a fate they should have met 40 years earlier.
It's 1980. Malin is fatherless, angry, and in trouble. At 20, he's spent a year in jail for assaulting a lover of Lily, his mother. In her desk he finds a soldier's photograph and assumes he's found his father. He confronts the man, now a teacher, and gets nowhere. At home again, he mocks his mother. Finally, she tells him her grim story, from the year before his birth. We see a people's court, where Lily's parents seek justice for their grandchild to be. We follow Lily to a prison camp, to the city where she's told to inform on the only person who's been kind, to an asylum, and finally to her current poverty and loneliness. How will Malin respond to these revelations?
A 70-year-old man, former mayor of a village, recalls his life: the difficult post-war years, the forced collectivisation of the land, the migration of the population. He has sacrificed his personal life trying to perform his office conscientiously.
Three friends, Maro, Shpera and Yuri are unemployed and hardly make ends meet. They have complicated and hysterical relationships with the people closest to them. They seem to have emigrated from their families and their country. Provoked by a mysterious telephone call, they set out on a journey, filled with the hope to change their lives.
A former US Operative, who lived in Russia in his earlier years and had been married there with a child, comes out of retirement to face down a former enemy, now running as a candidate for President in modern Russia. Working with a Russian policewoman, they work to uncover a plot to use biological weapons against certain factions of the Russian people to commit genocide. The virus would also be released in other populations, but would be treated making the candidate a hero. A side plot has the agent being reunited with his long lost daughter.
Schoolmates who graduated in 1989 in Bulgaria gather at a small hotel in the Rhodope mountain to celebrate their 30th high school anniversary. What is supposed to be a festive event turns into painful experience as old secrets and trauma still haunt them. The sum of their life experiences, their unfulfilled dreams and current goals reflect the upheavals of the post-communist society during the 30 years after the fall of the Berlin wall.
A group of scientists try to stop a swarm of flesh-eating locusts that escape from a top secret government lab in the USA Midwest.
While hunting a cultured and vicious psychopath, detective Amaldi faces the physical and moral decay of his city as well as the ghosts of his past.
The members of a music band that separated 30 years ago are forced to reunite.
The great Bulgarian football player Georgi Asparuhov and his greatest love - his wife Lita go through a number of trials of life, football and the political system.
In order to win the big prize in a popular TV quiz, the main characters of the film - four life-loving women in search of a nontraditional way to overcome the stifling confines of their existence, have to perform a striptease in front of the cameras in their home town. They experience various adventures and their families are subjected to serious challenges. Provincial society is scandalized and their friendships tested. The four women make great sacrifices to reach the stage.
In late summer 1991, three Italians reach a hunting reserve in Croatia with a station wagon. They go to deer, but, unaware of what's in store for months, they do not decipher the enigmatic signs that surround them. One of the three is suddendly wounded in the knee by a bullet of unknown provenance, and they end up in a hotel targeted by snipers night and day.
In a small Bulgarian town an aging homophobic wood-carver receives a tragic news which awakens his buried shame and anger.
