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THE BEAST IS STILL ALIVE (Past Film)
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Completed - BULGARIAN, ENGLISH, SPANISH, GREEK - Documentary, Drama, Animation - 90 minutes

Log Line

A young Bulgarian opens the Secret Police file of her dead Granddad to discover long concealed history secrets. While the crimes of Socialism remain unaccounted for in Bulgaria, the Socialist idea abroad has moved on.

Year of production : 2016

Director(s) : Mina MILEVA, Vesela KAZAKOVA
Writer(s) : Mina MILEVA, Vesela KAZAKOVA
Cast : Vesela KAZAKOVA, Rousy CHANEV

Producer(s) : Mina MILEVA, Vesela KAZAKOVA

Synopsis

A young Bulgarian woman observes the rise of the left idea globally while her country still suffers from the consequences of this idea. In a semi-mystic dialogue with her dead granddad she traces his transformation from a priest to a communist, then a militant anti-communist.
The Granddaughter is fed up with the hypocrisy of modern Bulgarian Socialists, who continuously advocate a social well fare system, while driving her country to catastrophe in the last 25 years. She questions the widespread popularity of the Socialist idea in general. Like most of Bulgaria’s youth, banished into exile, she has also found a living in London – the city her granddad adored but never visited.
The Granddad, a philosopher and an anglophile, had sympathized with the Socialist idea in the early 1920’s long before it had become official ideology of Bulgaria.
But later on, seeing the damage of the left propaganda in 1944, he had fled to the mountains to join massive opposition movement called “Goriani”. The Communist government employed all its military might to crush the revolutionaries who had expected in vain support from the West, England including. The movement was dispersed without a trace in the course of the next ten years, and its nearly quarter of million members executed. The Granddad was pardoned, in order to be assigned as an intelligence officer for the Communist Secret Services.
In the course of studying his files, the Granddaughter discovers, much to her discomfort that he had been tortured and forcefully assigned an agent for the Secret Services.
His expected contribution to the services had been to make economic analyses between the East and the West, proving that the Socialist world functions successfully. Unfortunately, he drew the opposite conclusion from the specialized literature he was given to read and wrote that Socialism is an economic failure. He openly criticized Stalin for his inability to recognize Capitalism’s economic structures and for his lacking the diplomatic genius of Churchill for example. As result he was sent to a notorious concentration camp on the Island of Danube River.
The story carries existential messages and the Granddad teaches his granddaughter his favourite quotes from Karl Marx. From his lengthy analyses of Marxism he had found a unique quotation from the Bible: “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” meaning that Capitalism’s aim for material wealth is also a very damaging one.
This semi-mystic dialogue between the Granddaughter and her Granddad, visualized with fanciful animated sequences restores the collective memory of generations so far apart.

Production

Country(ies) : BULGARIA, UNITED KINGDOM

Festivals and Awards

IDFA 2015 (IDFA FORUM)
EDP 2015 (IDFA Forum Award)
Warsaw FF 2016 Documentaries
IDFA 2016 (Panorama)
Beldocs Film Festival 2016
Manaki Brothers 2016
SEE East 2016
Sarajevo FF 2016 (Competition)
Calcutta Cult Film Festival 2017 (Best Documentary)
Aegean Docs 2017 (Best Documentary)
Tirana International Film Festival 2017
Trieste 2017 (Born in Trieste)
zagrebdox 2017 (Regional Competition)
Goteborg IFF 2017 (Documentaries)
Mexico International film festival 2018 (Golden Palm Award)
European Cinematography Awards 2018 (Best Documentary)
European Independent Film Awards 2018 (Best Director - Bronze Award)
European Independent Film Awards 2018 (Best Animation - Gold Award)


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