Bulgarian Rhapsody

Love Dreams

Edgar M. and his mother come abroad a small ship to Eden Sanatorium spa. It is here that the wife, wronged by her husband, will seek a cure for her bad headache, while the 13-year-old Edgar M. is fighting his first male impulses as well as 'enoresis nocturna', the prettier word for wetting one's bed. The boy's amazed gaze hungrily devours the diverse hotel guests, their love joys and sorrows, while passion lustfully penetrates the walls, carried by the voice of the enchanting opera singer.

Stars in Her Hair, Tears in Her Eyes

The tale of a stable of traveling Bulgarian actors at the turn of the century, with their newest recruit, a schoolteacher who has taken the understudy role of Desdemona in a performance of Shakespeare's "Othello", learning about her team and the passion they all share for theatre and the performing arts.

The Black Swans

Violetta is a ballerina in a provincial town. She is the daughter of an opera singer and a violinist. The years pass in anticipation of the big role, and the men she meets do not understand her and she remains alone. When the chance finally comes - to play the role of Odette, Violetta realises she has failed.

Boomerang

The last student days before the redistribution. The linguist must go to a remote village to work as a teacher. The outlook is not good at all for the ambitious man who published his own story and is searching for the realization of a career in literature. Mihail is looking for the possibility that will let him in Sofia. He is from countryside; his diploma is not of the highest merit; his career as an author is still not established. He meets by chance a famous writer. Soon the attitude of Mihail towards the writer becomes colder,, since he understands that he was used as an object of description. Mihail sees the situation as a deal - he offers "material" for the writer's novel for a note, needed for him to stay in Sofia. The writer's uncompromising nature breaks the deal and Mihail is traveling to the village or maybe to himself.

Journey to Jerusalem

Two German-Jewish children flee Nazi Germany in the early 1940s and try to escape to Palestine via Bulgaria. When their uncle dies during the journey, they are taken in by a troupe of travelling performers.

1952: Ivan and Aleksandra

This grim Bulgarian drama explores the effects that the postwar Stalinist-led social reorganization of that country had upon the lives not only of those who suffered public denunciation, but upon those who were coerced into going along with those denunciations against their will, and especially upon the children. In the story, the schoolgirl Alexandra's father was a celebrated partisan who fought against the Nazis in World War Two. His prominence must have been considered a threat, because at the beginning of this film, he denounced and arrested. Not only that, but Alexandra (Monika Budjonova) has her cherished Young Pioneer (communist youth league) membership stripped from her. Her teachers have been forced to publicly humiliate her for being the daughter of an enemy of the state, and her friends, except for the inexplicably loyal Ivan (Kliment Corbadziev) have had to abandon her.

Memory

The days of antifascist fight are over. In an orphanage for gifted children lives Milcho. The music helps him to escape from the real world to the world of memories. He remembers the days that the police officer arrested his mother for hiding a fugitive. A bright mark has left people that Milcho met, looking for his mother: the good old musician, the gypsy Shukri - raw natural talent, the beautiful Mila, and the Poet. They help Milcho to live through his pain. A piano concert of Brahms is playing by the young artist.

Bai Ganyo on His Way to Europe

Bay Ganyo is the national anti-hero. He personifies arrogance, insolence, greediness, and the absolute incapability to adopt any civilization principles of relationships. This protagonist was featured by great Bulgarian writer Aleko Konstantinov in the end of 19 c., both with an incredible sense of humor and anguish. Whether being in the Wiener Opera, or visiting a famous scientist at his home, or shopping, or just walking down the streets, this Bulgarian character, Bay Ganyo, is no more than a hopeless barbarian. The film makes new interpretation of this classical literature work. The comic adventures of Baj Ganjo are reconstructed in retro-nostalgic tonality. The final episode when the protagonist appears on the stage of the Wiener Opera among the singers participating in a Mozart's opera is the culmination of the transition of the farce into a tragic comedy.

After the End of the World

Two friends (Katarina Didaskalou, Stefan Danailov) are separated when their village is divided by Communism, but they meet again 40 years later and begin having an affair.

The Killing Grounds

Set against the backdrop of a violent gang war, the police commissioner must find who is killing young children before the next innocent victim dies.

Could You Kill

Seven Bulgarians living in a small town on the Danube river decide to become contract soldiers rangers to get rid of poverty. Their training drills and military maneuvers provoke smiles but thoughts as well for the fate of Europe and the world.

Cinema Againts Power

There was an undeclared war for nearly half a century in Bulgaria between the then government and the majority of democratic-minded filmmakers during the Communist regime. Paradoxically, most of the banned or censored out movies were made by members of the Communist Party, believers in their party's ideas and justice. The Communist Party aesthetics against the freedom to tell truth.

Бай Ганьо на гости

The Children's Train

In late 1940s Italy, a mother makes the difficult decision to send her son to the north, where he catches glimpses of a new life away from poverty.

The Song of Names

A man searches for his childhood best friend, a Polish violin prodigy orphaned in the Holocaust, who vanished decades before on the night of his first public performance.

Gloomy Sunday

Budapest in the 1930s. Restaurant owner Laszlo hires pianist András to play in his restaurant. Both men fall in love with the beautiful waitress Ilona who inspires András to his only composition. His song of Gloomy Sunday is, at first, loved and then feared, for its melancholic melody sets off a chain of suicides. The fragile balance of the erotic ménage à trois is sent off kilter when the German Hans falls in love with Ilona as well.

The Remains of the Day

A rule-bound head butler's world of manners and decorum in the household he maintains is tested by the arrival of a housekeeper who falls in love with him in post-WWI Britain. The possibility of romance and his master's cultivation of ties with the Nazi cause challenge his carefully maintained veneer of servitude.

Mirror

A dying man in his forties recalls his childhood, his mother, the war and personal moments that tell of and juxtapose pivotal moments in Soviet history with daily life.

Letters from Iwo Jima

The story of the battle of Iwo Jima between the United States and Imperial Japan during World War II, as told from the perspective of the Japanese who fought it.

The Great Escape

The Nazis, exasperated at the number of escapes from their prison camps by a relatively small number of Allied prisoners, relocate them to a high-security 'escape-proof' camp to sit out the remainder of the war. Undaunted, the prisoners plan one of the most ambitious escape attempts of World War II. Based on a true story.