Vesela Kazakova

The Beast Is Still Alive

Vesela Kazakova, Mina Mileva

Rousy Chanev, Vesela Kazakova

A young Bulgarian girl digs into her grandfather's turbulent life in an attempt to unravel the past and find answers and explanations for the catastrophic fall of communism.

Stolen Eyes

Radoslav Spassov

Vesela Kazakova, Valeri Yordanov

This is a story of strange, impossible, inexplicable love between a Muslim Turk woman and a non-Muslim Bulgarian man. Ivan (the Bulgarian) is a pure and romantic young fellow, who gets caught up in the so-called "regeneration process" (when ethnic Turks' names were forcibly changed to Bulgarian ones). He is responsible for the official seals, which is required to issue the new identity documents after the forced name changes. The schoolteacher Ayten tries to steal the seals, thinking that this way she can slow down the ethnic genocide. Their unexpected and unusual meeting brings these two characters together and makes them fell close, forcing Ivan to take a fateful decision -he must either "rename" Ayten, or face the consequences if he does not.

Uncle Tony, Three Fools and the Secret Service

Vesela Kazakova, Mina Mileva

This documentary was subjected to condemnation and attempts for institutional censorship as soon as it was done. The film observes how one man makes a career using another in the totalitarian society of Communist Bulgaria.

O Ehthros Mou

Yorgos Tsemberopoulos

Manolis Mavromatakis, Maria Zorba

Revenge is a recurrent theme in thrillers, usually dispensed by action heroes with a well-stocked arsenal. But in Yorgos Tsemberopoulos’s nuanced moral maze the protagonist is the bookish Kostas (Manolis Mavromatakis), a suburban florist well versed in social and political theory, which he discusses at length with a local publican. But when his home is invaded by masked hoodlums, who bind his family and rape his teenage daughter, our everyman hero finds his intellectual stance untenable. Encouraged by his paranoid, militarist neighbour, Kostas decides to take the law into his own hands, and in doing so begins to understand – for the first time – the world he has been living in. The vigilante movie is a well-explored genre too, but Tsemberopoulos gives it a whole new urgency, subverting the cliched right-wing fantasy structure and seeing it through the eyes of a man who comes to find his real self while trying to live up to the (imagined) expectations of others. (Source: LFF programme)

Mila from Mars

Zornitsa Sophia

Vesela Kazakova, Assen Blatechki

Fleeing an abusive relationship, Mila, a teen prostitute, finds herself in a border town, pregnant, alone, and, to her surprise, welcome. The remote village is on a marijuana plantation run by a group of elderly men and women. Not having known much kindness, she goes into emotional hiding, but by the time the baby is born she has a new life and love. Her past, however, is not far behind

Lin

Piers Thompson

Lin Clifton, Alexandar Lubenov Iliev

A woman arrives in an unknown country at daybreak. She appears to be running away from her past.

Ao: The Last Hunter

Jacques Malaterre

Helmi Dridi, Vesela Kazakova

When his clan, including his wife and baby girl Néa, are massacred, Ao, a desperate Neandertal man, decides to leave the North country where he has been living for the South where he was born. His aim is to join his twin brother, from whom he was separated when he was nine. On his long and adventurous way home, he meets Aki, a Homo Sapiens woman...

Котка в стената

Vesela Kazakova, Mina Mileva

Irina Atanasova, Angel Genov

Cat in the Wall tells the true story of how a cat, stuck in a wall, changes the lives of aspirational migrants, benefit fraudsters and gentrified Brexiteers.

Women Do Cry

Vesela Kazakova, Mina Mileva

Maria Bakalova, Vesela Kazakova

A mother stork is shot down from a chimney. A postnatal woman nearly jumps off a balcony. A girl contracts HIV from an adulterous partner. A woman applies make-up to two kittens. A mother looks for magic in the lunar calendar. These events are commonplace for this seemingly normal family, revealing the fine line they live between fragility and absurdity. In the meantime, their country Bulgaria is shaken up by anti-gender and anti-equality protests with an undercurrent of violence. These women are united by a shared trauma, but now they are ready to confront their father’s troubling past.