Lilyana Kovacheva

A study in human psychology that uses five disparate characters from clearly defined social positions, this film offers as much insight into the society of a changing Bulgaria, as it does into the minds of individuals in conflict. The story centers around transporting a worker's corpse, in a truck, to the mountain village where he was born. In the truck is: a man who may be suffering from tuberculosis, and who has an unfaithful wife at home; a doctor (the intellectual); a bookkeeper worried over the salaries she pays out; a hermit picked up on the road; and the driver who is a rough-and-ready working-class symbol. The seeds for conflict are set both by the personalities of the five in the truck and by their social background. The director Christo Christov, acknowledges his debt to Henri-Georges Clouzot and the Wages of Fear, for inspiration in the treatment of human conflict, its development through a set storyline, and its resolution in each of the five cases.

A pretty woman, divorced mother of a child works as a secretary at a research institute. She is taking an external degree. It all looks quite normal. In fact, she experiences serious difficulties: she has a problem with her ex-husband, her child is going through difficult age, a sycophant at the institute is exerting pressure on her, and the jealous wife of her boss makes malicious reports against her. She is forced to fight for each breath and to violate even her own principles in order to survive.

The Bulgarian intelligence officer Emil Boev is residing in Bern, close to Bulgarian political emigrant Goranov. The Swiss and German women Rosemary and Flora are interested in him. Goranov is killed. Boev searches his apartment and finds few fake diamonds and the list of the spies in Bulgaria. Boev and the boss of a foreign intelligence service Benton are stuck in a bunker together. At the decisive moment, Flora appears and Boev manages to get away with the list of the spies. Boev is on the way to Bulgaria.

The title of the film is taken from the popular Bulgarian song. This is a film about the life of a common Bulgarian worker. The action focuses on his family, his relatives, and his friends.

A famous stage and screen actor has been invited for an interview on 'Question Time', a popular Bulgarian TV program. He has fought heroically in the anti-fascist resistance and at present his talent is bringing him artistic satisfaction and fame. His personal life also seems to be trouble-free. After the end of Sunday program, however, he learns that he is terminally ill with leukemia. The prospect of death destroys his all too comfortable illusions and turns his ideas of life upside down. His love for a provincial actress, from whom he has broken away in the past, is rekindled. Now he needs a closer relationship with his only son, who owes many of his complexes to the egotism of his father. The deceptive harmony between genuine and pseudo art in his career gets disturbed. The protagonist devotes the last few month of his life to the staging of a play which has been rejected in the past, and which he has not had the courage to defend.

Большая игра