Image by Josef Rabara
newsletter #5
Nisimazine
Karlovy Vary 2012
Back in the days when there was no Facebook, it was the task of the secret police to minutely follow citizens′ lives, habits and tastes as we saw in the Hungarian historical drama The Exam. From the gloomy and paranoid alleys of Communist Budapest, we boarded on Sofia′s Last Ambulance to experience first-hand the benefits of post-soviet democracy in Bulgaria (i.e. destruction of the health system) and ended our trip in Ukraine, accompanying a little kid on his search for a House With a Turret.
Sofia’s Last Ambulance
Interview: The Exam
interview by Andreea Dobre (Romania)
In the troubled late fifties, Hungarian secret police agents’ loyalty had to be put to the test in Péter Bergendy’s The Exam: with perfectly constructed characters and suspense, this is a must see for any fan of high-class spy films like The Lives of Others or Tinker, Taylor, Soldier, Spy. MORE
House With a Turret
review by Giovanni Vimercati (Italy)
The amount of allegorical pregnancy Bulgarian director Ilian Metev manages to squeeze into the tight space of an ambulance is definitely worth praise. Delivered from the homologation of soviet communism at the kind hands of democracy, Bulgaria is now facing a new, more liberal nightmare: the destruction of public services. MORE
review by Mirona Nicola (Romania)
Eva Neyman’s film “House with a turret” is a visual journey into a country covered in snow and left poor by war. This is a place of beautiful, deserted landscapes, but also of people overcome by both need and greed. MORE