2013

A charmer as handsome as Apollo, women’s favourite, undisciplined, a bruiser, a fascist: Who was he actually? Who was Dimirtar Spisarevski? The film is a panopticon of a kind of different segments of our society today, which in a funny and absurd and at times, in a dramatic and a fanatical way asserts their right to have their own opinion and interpretation of the character and the right to identification with him.

A man, Nikola Vaptsarov was sentenced to death on 23 July 1942 by a field court marshal of the then Bulgarian puppet government. Surprisingly enough, the then Communist leaders in charge of Vaptsarov’s activities and tried by the same court, got off with lighter sentences and in the wake of the upheaval of 1944 stood at the helm of this country. A decade later, the world got to know that the man executed in the hot summer of 1942 was the greatest of all the Bulgarian poets born in the twentieth century. And his nearest and dearest took to cashing in on his popularity.

Plovdiv is the dominant theme in this documentary about the artistic past of the city and particularly, of that of the Old Town. Bulgarian jazz musician Ognian Videv is among the last and undoubtedly, most renowned Plovdiv Bohemians along with the departed artists, musicians, poets, writers and actors such as Atanas Krastev, alias Nacho Culturata; Georgi Bozhilov – Slona; Katia Paskaleva, Dimitar Kirov, Georgi Boiadjiev – Boiadjana. He is indelibly related to Plovdiv. The musician declares his love to his guitar; his memories evoke moments of the reality and of the past. Music makes us think about ourselves and how fleeting life is.

Ilia was a baby, when he was given up for international adoption, while our crew was shooting at an orphanage in 1993. Two decades later the young Frenchman arrived in Bulgaria to reunite with his mother and seven siblings. The film is an account of these moments overbrimming with emotions, amazement and mistrust, a surprise of the clash of cultures... The documentary poses also questions about what has happened to Branimira-Брани, John-Petko, Natalie-Danka and Joseph-Boian, Maria and Dian, who were adopted by foreigners before our eyes, which was captured by the camera. Bulgaria is the sole EU Member-State, giving children for international adoption.