BEST OF FESTS

UROTCITE NA BLAGA

2023 / 114 min / color

Stephan Komandarev’s new film, which concludes his trilogy on the problems with contemporary Bulgarian society, is one of the biggest hits of the last festival season. Often referred to as the Bulgarian Breaking Bad, Blaga’s Lessons is a gripping, internationally acclaimed thriller featuring a powerful lead performance by Eli Skorcheva. She plays a recently widowed 70-year-old woman who has worked as a teacher her whole life and falls victim to an elaborate telephone scam, losing all the money she had saved to get a tombstone for her late husband. Humiliated and desperate, she realizes that the only way to move forward is by abandoning the values that have always guided her and following a criminal path. While adhering to the genre formula, Komandarev’s film is also a bitter assessment of a “welfare” state that leaves its citizens to their own devices, forcing them to make morally questionable decisions as a matter of survival.

• Karlovy Vary IFF – Best Film, Best Actress (Eli Skorcheva), Ecumenical Jury Prize;
• Rome IFF – Grand Jury Prize;
• Goa IFF – Best Director