The Countess

Let us imagine isolation, fear, almost generic fear, and ancient, pervasive, self-generated. This fear becomes a system. The little man, forced, struggled to maintain his minimal right, the right to survive. But today, this crushed, squeezed, almost destroyed little man stands on the border, the one that separates— or unites—the old system and the new, the world of competition, where survival is precisely through profitability, profit. Then the little man becomes the hero, the model, the hero of this almost demonological thriller.

Writer Martin Sestrimsky and Secret Service agent Boyan Tilev got to know each other on the day when Martin gave Tilev a special dossier of grave consequences, which the writer has tried to surmount. With the ousting from power of Todor Zhivkov’s totalitarian regime, their relations take a new turn, when Tilev’s stepdaughter, Nevena, a mysterious young woman of double identity steps in. While Tilev is making a fortune from illicit deals, Sestrimsky, encouraged by Nevena, is doing his best to reconcile to his past. The truth of the two men’s shared past will come to light.

Kesten is a picturesque village on the border between Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece. A French sociologist named Franæois Denis comes to the village to study the risk of ethnic conflict in this part of the Balkans. He finds out that in a place situated only 100 kilometers from Kosovo there are Muslims and Christians capable of living in peace just as they have for hundreds of years. But what is far more interesting to this western visitor is meeting the local inhabitants: Vladimír, who fills all municipal posts from mayor to postmaster, a poet whose verse has never been published and who longs to see Rossellini's The Greatest Love one last time, and a smuggler who is willing to do anything for his mentally disabled brother. It's a fascinating and absurd, though harmonious, world where anything can happen - where even wine has flowed from the water taps...

Through two unique female personas the film suggests a metaphysical idea of the present as ever recurring, since the temptations, which the human soul faces, are always the same. But any choice can be made only after the experience of the past is passed on and shared with a kindred spirit in the present. Such is the nature of the relationship between Adriana, the femme fatale of 1938, and the innocent Yura of 2008.

Past and present intertwine through the eyes of a young girl who visits a series of locations graced by Aunt Vaska's special touch. Friends and family recall the talented sculptor's art, personality and worldview. This project celebrates 120 years since the birth of Vaska Emanuilova.