The Palace of Laughter

In the late 1980s, stage actor Alexander Petrov is banned from theatre without any apparent reason. When he reappears, after the demise of the Communist regime, he discovers that he had been denounced by the one man he admired most, his master and friend. He discovers this fact at the very moment that he is called upon to deliver a funeral eulogy for the man. Devastated, Petrov declares that he is retiring from public life. That’s when Markov offers his help. An old acquaintance, Markov was a former director of the secret service, who has become a successful businessman. Now, in the mid-1990s, the country is wracked by unretstrained capitalism, along with violence and gang wars. Markov, an admirer of Petrov’s stage talents, offers to make him the leader of a new political party aiming at rescuing the country. Can this work? Is Markov the right man to be allied with? Petrov must make a fateful decision.

The two Yavashev brothers have been living apart for 26 years on the opposite sides of the iron curtain. Confined in the communist Bulgaria Anani Yavashev remains just an ordinary artist. Christo escapes from the country in 1956 and becomes a world-famous modern artist. Two destinies embody the hopes and illusions of two different worlds.

The story of a traveling Bulgarian circus before the collapse of “developed socialism” in the People’s Republic of Bulgaria. A portrait “without masks and without makeup” of a troupe and of an era - behind the scenes and under the spotlight.