Zahari Zhandov

The film is dedicated to the uprising, which broke out in Bulgaria in September 1923. All characters, with the exception of the leaders of the uprising Georgi Dimitrov and Vasil Kolarov, are symbolic characters. The central figures, Stefan and Peter, impersonate the motive forces behind the uprising - the workers and the peasants. They are involved in worker's strikes, in the stormy events of the First World War and the Soldier's uprising in 1918. They also participate in the bloody clashes of the September uprising and suffer its defeat after they have seen too late the need for concerted action by communists and agrarians.

A Bulgarian village before the First World War. The young and ambitious farmer Enyo loves the beautiful but poor Tsveta. His brother and his wife arrange their engagement. The hunchback girl Stanka, daughter of the richest man in the village, is in love with Enyo. Because of her father's lands Enyo decides to end his engagement with Tsveta and starts building up his farm.

A documentary account of the lives of Muslim Bulgarians in the Rhodopes—their way of life, traditions, and customs. In it, Zhandov seeks not merely the exotic or the unfamiliar, but the human being and their world, viewed from within.

Men Among Clouds by Zahari Zhandov takes us to Bulgaria’s high-altitude weather stations. The rugged, beautiful mountain landscape meets portraits of ordinary people dedicated to their profession.

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.

This is a film about the moral and philosophical sides of the life and the art, about the complex relations between the artist and the rough rules of the time in which he lives.

A bandit chief falls in love with a wealthy man's daughter.

Bulgarian high-mountain meteorological stations and observatories. Raw and beautiful nature, ordinary people devoted to their profession, impressive observations, popular scientific information.