How to Watch
A beautifully-made film that astutely balances dry humor with important contemporary drama, this clever, impressively scripted and wonderfully performed feature manages the rare feat of being compassionate and provocative while also delivering striking moments of absurdist humor.
In a period when the subject of immigration is very much in the headlines this is very much a film for our times. It centers on Svetlana (Svetlana Yancheva, a dead ringer for Frances McDormand, as is her tough-as-nails character), a widowed, former school teacher in a blighted village in Eastern Europe. Several of the locals nurse an unrequited passion for Svetlana, but she brusquely dismisses their advances. These rejections help fuel small-town xenophobia into overdrive when Svetlana takes in Bamba (Michael Fleming), a Malian doctor trying to make his way to Germany. Winner, Grand Prize, Tallinn Black Nights; Best Film, Varna. Please be aware: some dialogue contains racial slurs. (Alissa Simon)
Director Biography
Born in 1955 in Sofia, Bulgaria, Ivaylo Hristov is an actor and director who graduated from the department of acting at the National Academy for Theatre and Film Arts. With dozens of acting credits in both stage and cinema, Hristov turned to filmmaking, and is the director of the features Emigrants (Emigranti) (2002), Footsteps in the Sand (Stapki v pyasaka) (2010), Losers (Karatsi) (2015) and his most recent film, Fear (Strah) (2020).
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