Film Archive

Filmstill A Provincial Hospital

A Provincial Hospital

A Provincial Hospital
Ilian Metev, Ivan Chertov, Zlatina Teneva
Panorama Middle and Eastern Europe 2022
Documentary Film
Bulgaria,
Germany
2022
110 minutes
Bulgarian
Subtitles: 
English

Kyustendil, a city in the Bulgarian mountains, was hit hard by Covid. The local hospital is probably a reasonably representative microcosm of how the medical staff dealt with the worst consequences of the pandemic. Ten years after his debut “Sofia’s Last Ambulance” (DOK Leipzig 2012), Ilian Metev returns with another film about a national health system that opposes the virus with gallows humour and individual commitment.

Metev himself was stuck in London during the shooting, monitoring from afar as co-director Teneva and her colleague Chertov collected the material and edited it alone. The focus is on the hospital staff. And if there is one main protagonist among the countless members of the cast, it’s Dr. Popov. Warm-hearted and always ready with a quip, we even often see him without a mask – the other employees are usually hidden behind protective gear. They all share a tough sense of humour to get them through the days and nights. The logistical challenges of such a film project also crop up: The people with the cameras are frequently mentioned and addressed. In this emergency community of patients, doctors and film crew they seem to be always ready to joke. But death, up in the intensive care unit, is very close.
Lina Dinkla

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Ilian Metev, Ivan Chertov, Zlatina Teneva
Script
Ilian Metev, Ivan Chertov, Zlatina Teneva
Cinematographer
Ivan Chertov
Editor
Ilian Metev
Producer
Martichka Bozhilova, Ilian Metev, Ingmar Trost
Sound
Zlatina Teneva
Sound Design
Ivan Andreev, Adrian Lo
World Sales
Marcella Jelić
Nominated for: MDR Film Prize
Kids DOK 2020
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Mishou
Milen Vitanov
When a small dog is forgotten in the midst of the arctic desert, four snow hares take heart-warming care of him. But they don’t know very much about what a dog really needs.
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Mishou

Mishou
Milen Vitanov
Kids DOK 2020
Animated Film
Bulgaria,
Germany
2020
8 minutes
without dialogue
Subtitles: 
None

Somewhere in the eternal ice. All around nothing but snow and pleasant silence. Until a helicopter lands to drop off a group of tourists. A few quick photos are taken and off they go. The uninvited guests leave behind a pile of rubbish – and a small dog who is suddenly quite lost. Four snow hares take heart-warming care of him.

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Milen Vitanov
Script
Milen Vitanov, Vera Trajanova
Cinematographer
Olaf Aue
Producer
Vesela Kazakova, Milen Vitanov, ZDF
Sound
Michał Krajczok
Score
Leonard Petersen
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Our Quiet Place

Un endroit silencieux
Elitza Gueorguieva
Camera Lucida – Out of Competition 2021
Documentary Film
Bulgaria,
France
2021
68 minutes
Bulgarian,
English,
French
Subtitles: 
English, German Subtitles for deaf and hard-of-hearing

By adopting the French language, Belarusian writer Aliona Gloukhova has found a way to write about her vanished father. Director Elitza Gueorguieva follows this process, which culminates in the publication of a book. At the same time, the lives of two women cross paths who ended up in Western Europe partly to gain distance from their home countries, Belarus and Bulgaria.

Using the coordinate system of a foreign language to express what would feel dramatic or pathetic otherwise: Aliona Gloukhova chose this method to write down the story of her father, a quiet dissident and Chernobyl expert who suddenly disappeared in the mid-1990s. The memories of him are sketchy, and perhaps even what masquerades as memory isn’t real. Aliona immerses herself in fiction and the French vocabulary that gives her the freedom to formulate her own version of what happened. Elitza Gueorguieva follows this cautious approach to the biographical-linguistic complex, which also appeals to her own memories. Because on the streets of Minsk, which she walks with Aliona, she immediately feels the familiar childhood fear. It overwhelms her like biting into a madeleine she had better not tasted.
Carolin Weidner

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Elitza Gueorguieva
Cinematographer
Thomas Favel, Elitza Gueorguieva
Editor
Mélanie Braux
Producer
Eugénie Michel Villette
Co-Producer
Martichka Bozhilova
Sound
Arno Ledoux
Score
Arno Ledoux
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The Cars We Drove into Capitalism

The Cars We Drove into Capitalism
Georgi Bogdanov, Boris Missirkov
Competition for the Audience Award 2021
Documentary Film
Bulgaria,
Croatia,
Czech Republic,
Denmark,
Germany
2021
93 minutes
Bulgarian,
Czech,
English,
German,
Norwegian,
Russian
Subtitles: 
English

A nostalgic trip into a past when buying a car constituted a lifetime’s work – especially for those Europeans who had a maximum of two handful of brands at their disposal. This cheerfully edited collection of auto biographies from socialist production evokes seemingly carefree times when the motorized vehicle was allowed to be simply a status symbol: free from ideological turf wars revolving around the climate crisis and mobility diets.

From Russia via Bulgaria and the Czech Republic to Germany and Norway, love stories between humans and Trabi, Moskvitch and Volga are captured on film. We meet protagonists who are fond of their beloved piece of tin, then or now, or have even amassed a considerable collection. There’s a couple who met and fell in love at a retro car exhibition and still drive the same model today. We meet a sexton who passes on his official car after 32 years of use. We make the acquaintance of a pin-up who always poses in front of vintage cars from the East. They all have a soft spot for these rickety rust buckets, because even though the products of the socialist car industry were usually slow, chunky, tedious to drive and to repair, they were all regarded as showpieces of a successful life. And there was one in almost every family: coveted, long longed-for, assiduously polished.
Lina Dinkla

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Georgi Bogdanov, Boris Missirkov
Script
Boris Missirkov, Georgi Bogdanov
Cinematographer
Boris Missirkov, Georgi Bogdanov
Editor
Emil Granicharov, Jacob Thuessen, Georgi Tenev
Producer
Martichka Bozhilova
Co-Producer
Tina Leeb, Miljenka Čogelja, Dana Budisavljević, Jiří Konečný, Sigrid Jonsson Dyekjær, Sascha Beier, Simone Baumann
Sound
Veselin Zografov