Emigrants

A retelling of a crucial story of Bulgaria's troubled times based on the memoirs of Zahariy Stoyanov

This is a film about the fate of a group of students and their wondering to find their true place in life. Of course each of them tries to find his own way.

Two eternal opposing theses - play is our life or life is our play - are the base of music, dance and verse which fit together in this film.

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.

1876. The Turks murder the parents of the 14-year-old Rali. His only relative is sentenced to life imprisonment in the Asian fortress. Rali walks after the condemned men. After a long and painful road, he reaches the fortress. He finds help from the old man and his daughter. With their assistance, he organizes the escape of the condemned. After numerous adventures the fugitives reaches the motherland. They enlist in a Bulgarian rebel army together with the Russian soldiers of the Russian-Turkish War for the freedom of Bulgaria.

At the airport, Slavi tells his life's story to a young customs officer. As children, Nelly promises Slavi to marry him. The two teenagers are passionately in love with each other but after some time Nelly falls in love with another guy. Slavi takes up drinking and gets into trouble with the Bulgarian militia (police) because of his family background. This is when he decides to defect to the West. After staying at a refugee camp in Austria and another desperate love, he sets out to the United States. There Slavi makes some new friends who help him buy a truck. He hits the roads of America, where he comes across an Indian who sells him an arrow. The vender tells him this amulet will bring his love back. Eventually, Slavi comes back to Bulgaria, where communism has collapsed. His beloved Nelly lives alone with her daughter. One day Slavi meets her again...

A couple and their teenage son eke out a living on a hilltop, doing the laundry for local hotels, despite the intermittent water supply. Their simple life is overturned by the arrival of a father-and-daughter team of diviner and well-digger, who promise to bring an end to this precarious existence by finding a source on their arid hill. But ultimately, these newcomers quench a thirst far greater than than the simple need for water.

Svetla, a widow who lost her job recently is living next to the Bulgarian-Turkish border. There are many cases of refugees in her village due to its location. One day she meets a refugee from Africa and this changes her life.

Just an ordinary boy from the Sofia suburbs becomes the first bulgarian undercover cop. Forced by his father when he was young to lie and cheat, Martin becomes the perfect liar. That skill, and also the hatred of the 'underworld' makes him the perfect match for a dangerous mission - to infiltrate the crime organisation of a rich and powerful businessman. While infiltrating and living in fear of being uncovered, Martin falls in love with the most inappropriate woman - Djaro's girlfriend, Suni. Just when he gains the trust of the mobsters, it appears that the real enemy is in the police. Martin is alone against all, facing difficult decisions.

Teenage Koko lives in a nondescript town in Southern Bulgaria. His parents moved to Greece where the wages are higher, leaving Koko alone to care for his grandmother, an elderly and unwieldy woman with Alzheimer's. Koko is in love with Elena, an aspiring singer who seems only to care about a famous rock band scheduled to pass through town. On the night of the big event, the social fabric of the teens' provincial lives is thrown into disarray, paving the way for new constellations.

Three young couples, who live almost like one family, are isolated from the external world. They are on the edge of breaking their relationship. Nobody is happy with this, but nobody tries to change anything.

Sofia, the 90's. Emilia's colorful group of friends are portrayed in a series of separate but intertwined stories. On its own each story peers into the life of a single downtrodden person. Viewed as a whole, they portray a common struggle of coming to terms with the uncertain world these people live in, and how it all weighs on Emilia.

A delicate analysis of the movement of the human spirit and the love between men and women which has the power to reveal the beauty of the soul from the cradle to the grave.

When a sick factory worker becomes the first confirmed COVID-19 case in her rural Bulgarian town, she is scapegoated and ostracized by her employers, family, and entire community as the virus spreads and casualties mount.

Blaga is a seventy-year-old recently widowed former teacher and a woman of firm morals. When telephone scammers con her out of the money that she had saved for her husband’s grave, her moral compass slowly begins to lose its bearings…

Heat, iron, dust and the smell of oil. A typical workday of maximum security inmates will prove to be fateful for all of them. They find something extraordinary inside one of the machines, and an unexpected wave of compassion makes the prisoners take hostages and block the entrance to the workshop and risk their lives, because sometimes the desire to be human is stronger than the survival instinct.