Tzvetan Alexiev

Sofia. A hot July Friday pits two old rivals against each other. Twenty-five years later they are still boxers, albeit this time they are not wearing gloves.

Grigor, a nondescript, naive man whom everyone mockingly calls Gringo, begins to hear a voice. This voice claims to represent the truer part of him. And it begins to urge him to avenge the undeserved humiliation and abuse he is constantly subjected to. In doing so, he will break with outdated prejudices, become a new man. Grigor resists, but can he resist temptation and the truth of evil? The voice falls silent when the crime is committed. Has Grigor himself committed it? And what kind of man is he then?

A professional photographer becomes involved with a woman he has just met and her brother. The mentally ill brother never leaves his room and the photographer tries to find a way to help him.

Smart, angry, self-reliant Dida will stop at nothing to achieve a single tangible goal – to buy a plane ticket so she can join her estranged mother in the United States.

The stories of three men get tangled up in the life of the young Gipsy called Magdalena - that of the Bulgarian Lilyanin, who starts off as a fighter for brotherhood but turns into a persecutor of the Gypsies; the story of the savage Halibryamov, who knows the language of animals, but does not speak any human tongue; the story of a rich Gypsy called Kanyo who wants but does not dare to break with the lot of his kin, and story of a Frenchman in a wheelchair who comes to realize that money cannot buy everything. Magic alone can unravel this knot of destinies... And then, there is the Gypsy tale of the black swallow and how it came to be.