Documentary films

  • A film in two parts -  and - about the great Bulgarian playwright and poet Ivan Radoev, who, between the years 1981-1985, answered the questions of literary critic Maria Gareva. The tape recordings of these interviews are among the few preserved authentic confessions of the great Bulgarian author. They are the basis of this film, teeming with exciting archival photographs and film material. The film highlights the moral force of a Bulgarian intellectual, who lived in a time of spiritual and political dictatorship.
  • They have never studied the art of filmmaking. Nevertheless, they are some of the most popular figures of Bulgarian cinema. They are tightly connected to its history. The audiences love them. None of their films contains hidden, though elementary truth. All truth is shown close-up. They had been friends from before they started working together. They are the magnificent three, as if taken from classics: sometimes the three musketeers, sometimes three men in a boat, sometimes three men on the bummel, but mostly, they are three men contra mundum. Jackie Stoev, Johnny Penkov and Charlie Iliev take you for a carousel ride in the fun-fair of their life, where attractions include more past than future, old and new stories, film bits and cuts, anecdotes and a lot of tommy rot, scattered over two centuries and two regimes. At the end one is convinced: if the price of freedom is to look like an idiot, it is not that high.
  • A 30-year-old Roma accordion player forms a band in Vienna, naming it . This band wins the most prestigious Austrian award for "world music“. The film follows the young virtuoso on his way back to Bulgaria for a first time after a decade of emigration. Here in the town of Kotel, one of the poorest Bulgarian communities in this country, according to the UN statistics, he tutors a workshop for gifted local teenagers.
  • Joel Rabinowitz is a French painter and sculptor, who has been working in the area of industry for many years now. He started his career by convincing the Renault factories in Europe to render working interiors much more artistry through different murals and suitable colouring of the workshops. With his last project – 15 columns, 6 meters high, out of which emerge, as if about to fly, 85 figures, made of 20-mmthick aluminium – he once again proves that art and industry can work together and help each other.
  • Kardzhali, the summer of 2001. No election campaigns. No shocking news. Several personal stories of women between 15 and 83. From different ethnic groups and religions, sometimes in unusual combinations. They have different – or perhaps the same – dreams. In that region of diminishing population life carries on its silent battle.
  • Turkish soap operas have taken the world by storm, conquering the hearts of millions of viewers in the Middle East, North Africa, the Balkans and Asia. With unprecedented access to the industry's most glamorous actors and creative talent, ‘Kismet' unravels the secrets of this phenomenal success that ranscends religion and culture. From the lavish production sets of the most popular Turkish soap operas, the film travels to streets and homes in Cairo, Abu Dhabi, Istanbul, Athens, Sofia and Mostar, to discover how these taboobreaking soaps are helping women across the region to claim their rights and transform their lives.
  • A documentary about the great love of Japanese journalist Yoshinori Maeda and Bulgarian girl Anastasia Makrelova-Maeda. They were brought together during the hard times of the WWII in Plovdiv. Against the background of the stormy events in Bulgaria’s and Japan’s history in the 20th c., the film reveals the major role the Maedas played in developing the Bulgarian-Japanese relations. Few years after their marriage Yoshinori Maeda became President of NHK.
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