Life Almost Wonderful

Dreaming of the West, Boryana is determined not to have a child in communist Bulgaria. Nonetheless, her daughter Viktoria enters the world in 1979, curiously missing a belly button, and is declared the country’s Baby of the Decade. Pampered by her mother state until the age of nine, Viktoria’s decade of notoriety comes crashing down with the rest of European communism. But can political collapse and the hardship of new times finally bring Viktoria and her reluctant mother closer together

Vassil (41) is a documentary film director who has not achieved the success he dreams of. He puts all his energy filming the broken relationship between a monk and his mother. Meanwhile Vassil's wife and their 14-year-old daughter take second place in his life. The director learns that the monk is in a psychiatry while his mother will have to undergo a cancer surgery. To bring them together to forgive each other is Vassil's long awaited finale of his film. He faces a dilemma to shoot "life as it is" or show human compassion and empathy.

Sunny Beach at socialist Bulgaria, the summer of 1967. 19-year-old Bulgarian SNESCHA meets FRANZ, an 18-year-old Austrian lad. They dance and talk, he is speaking German and she – Bulgarian, and despite the language barrier, they fall in love. In 1975 they get married and leave for Austria. SNESCHA gets pregnant and gives birth to twin sisters. FRANZ embarks to an expedition in Iran and Pamir. SNESCHA gives birth to a third daughter. His next adventure is passing the river Niger to the city of Bamako in Mali. After that he goes back to Austria and buys a house on credit. In 1987 he decides to make a bicycle tour going through Tibet. Despite SNESCHA’S disagreeing, he sets for Pakistan and never comes back. SNESCHA has to take care of her daughters and pay for the house.