While inspecting the tracks one day, low-level railroad worker Tsanko Petrov finds a pile of cash amounting to millions of leva. Though this represents about a month’s salary, he’s an honest worker and decides to turn the entire amount over to the police. The Bulgarian Ministry of Transport is eager to use this good deed to hide their rampant corruption, so the state rewards him with a mediocre new digital watch -- cold comfort considering he already owns a renowned Slava, a beautiful and accurate Russian watch whose name means Glory. And when Julia Staikova, the bumbling head of the PR department, loses the Glory watch, our hero embarks on a desperate journey to get his old timepiece back, as well as his dignity. Directors Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov weave a funny yet melancholy tale that Indiewire calls “Frank Capra meets the Dardenne Brothers.”
Press
”Directing duo Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov's witty and ingeniously crafted follow-up to The Lesson (2014) is a snapshot of a contemporary Bulgaria plagued by injustice and corruption.” - Variety
”A gripping dark comedy that turns unnervingly tragic in its final stages.” - The Hollywood Reporter
Directors’ Statement
Years ago, a poor railroad linesman in Bulgaria found a bag full of cash spilled on the rails and handed it over to the police right away. The government tried to make a hero out of him, but this incident brought the linesman ill-fame rather than glory – his townsfolk proclaimed him a total jerk for giving the money back. In the process of researching our story, we came upon a deeply moving interview with the prototype of our hero. The interview ended like this: “If I happen to find a huge amount of money again, I’ll just walk on by. Let somebody else find it, let them take it or give it to the police. I don’t want to have anything to do with it.” It was these words that became our main creative impulse and stirred our imagination into building a tragicomedy of the absurd.
Directors’ Biographies
Kristina Grozeva: Kristina Grozeva graduated from the Sofia State University and for a while worked as a journalist for Bulgarian TV, before she decided to enroll at the National Academy for Theater and Film Arts (Sofia, Bulgaria), where she studied film directing. Her student short films won several awards at international student film festivals, among them Best Fiction Debut at the Bulgarian Film Academy Awards 2008 for Birds of Heaven; Special mention of the jury of the International Student Film Festival, Casablanca, Morocco 2009; and Special mention of the jury of the Media School International Film Festival, Lodz 2009. She also won the best short film under 10 minutes from the International Student Film Festival in Montevideo, Uruguay, and The Best Film of International One-Minute Film Festival-FILMINUTE, UK, 2007 for Game.
Petar Valchanov: Petar Valchanov was born in 1982 in Plovdiv. He graduated art school in his home town in 2000, before moving to Sofia to study film directing at the National Academy for Theater and Film Arts, where he graduated in 2002. His first short film Shock was in the student program at Karlovy Vary Film Festival 2001, while his subsequent shorts – Resurrection, Captured, and Family Therapy – have been shown around the world and recognized with several awards. Valchanov directed the documentary Parable of Life (2009) and the TV movie Forced Landing (2010) together with Kristina Grozeva, which marked the beginning of a permanent collaboration.
Grozeva and Valchanov’s short film Jump was nominated for the European Film Awards 2013 at Clermont – Ferrand, making it the first Bulgarian short ever nominated for the EFA. Jump won the Grand Prix at Brussels SFF 2013; the Excellence Award for Best Picture at Busan; and was awarded Best Short Film by the Bulgarian Film Academy in 2013, among others. The Lesson is their feature debut, which won multiple awards at San Sebastian, Tokyo, Warsaw, Thessaloniki, Gothenburg, Transylvania, Sofia and many others.