Bulgarian documentary and feature film festival 19-23 October

Plot: In a remote provincial town Gana looks after elderly with dementia, while trafficking their ID cards on the black market. She provides for her mother, with whom she hardly speaks. Her relationship with her boyfriend is no shelter for love either – with sexual attraction vanished, intimacy is reduced to morphine addiction. Nothing seems to have consequence on Gana’s conscience, even the incidental murder of a patient, who threatens to expose her fraudulent deeds. Change begins when Gana hears the music of Yoan, whose ID card she’s trafficked. A growing empathy for him unlocks her drugged-up conscience. But when Yoan is arrested, Gana learns that doing “the right thing” comes at a high price.

“I feel that a non-actor whose life is close to that of the character in the story brings further depth to the film. Godless deals with the emotional pain of Bulgarian society, and it was very important for me to show that pain imprinted on the actors’ faces. They carry more meaning in their silence than what I would have been able to extract from a middle-class actor or actress who would be playing an idea. I am interested in watching people “being” and not only “seeming”. It also depends on the kind of story. This is an austere story, and with this approach I was able to create more tension.“

Ralitza Petrova for Cineuropa.org