bonevkost Reviews

Away from the shore (2018)

The Drunken ship still Sailing "Away from the Shore"

[10/10 · 14 September 2019]

The Drunken ship still Sailing "Away from the Shore"

Penko Gospodinov with a strong role in the new film by Kostadin Bonev

Author: Irina Gigova 11:45, the 12th of September 2019



Cinema in the Theater - this is the fundamental formula that builds the fabric of Kostadin Bonev's new film "Away from the Shore", which after several festival shows in Bulgaria, had its Sofia gala premiere on Wednesday night. Theater life as a miniature model of the world and the world as a theater of the absurd are curious storylines to be told and, at the same time, attractive metaphors to which native seventh art has repeatedly addressed with titles such as "Love's Play" by Janusz Vazov (1980), "Madame Bovary from Sliven", "Rhapsody in White" by Teddy Moskov (2002), "While Aya was sleeping" by Tsvetodar Markov (2016), and probably more...

Compared to them, "Away from the Shore" has the most complex structure (it is no coincidence that the director has worked on it for more than 6 years), however it does not display any mannered pretentious style.

After staging a quite bold play that irritated the strong of the day, Sofia based theater director Zlati Bratoev (in a convincing, absorbed, and without unnecessary exultation performance by Penko Gospodinov) was sent to a "creative" exile for 2 years in a provincial theater. There he continues to struggle to realize the performance of his dreams, in which an impostor captain (Stefan Valdobrev) drives a mystical ship madly, moving it in a circle on the high seas, and within his crew he sows fear, suspicions, a mania for pursuit and a sense of looming danger. A frank allegory of methods of power. Bonev's film develops into three levels: on the one hand, there are relationships in the troupe that are not at all easy with this "set bomb" in the repertoire, and on the other hand, there are the relations between the characters in the play, which, as a third level, at some moments emerge from the conventions of art and are transposed into reality amidst the endless vast expanse of sea. The cameramen Konstantin Zankov and Orlin Ruevski have done a wonderful job visually bringing out these different worlds.



The story, based on motifs from Evgeniy Kuzmanov's novel "Seagulls Away from the Shore" is apparently set in a time of stagnation in the shallows of developed Socialism.

But if we exclude some of the characteristic features of the era, such as the calling of artists for "instructions" in the offices of local party greats, art councils in theaters, forcing the weak and the uncomfortable ones to sign declarations of cooperation with the State Security, the story could be read universally. At times, the demonic absurdity in the movie sounds just like George Orwell's "1984". For example, the requirement not to show unhappy people on the stage. Or, at first glance, the inexplicable considerations and factors that stop and then "release" the play... "My only consolation is that there will be nothing left of us," something like that says the theater manager Mihailina Mihailova, who rediscovered her professional and human dignity and brilliantly played by Joreta Nikolova. However, the manipulations of the rulers and the refusal of freedom from the part of the conformists has remained - this is the "public contract" that is rolling in today's hypocritical world.

Bonev has gathered a remarkable acting team in "Away from the Shore": Mariy Rosen, Yoana Bukovska-Davidova, Louisa Grigorova, Svezhen Mladenov, Nikola Dodov, Tanya Shahova, Blagovest Blagoev and others. Tsvetana Maneva and Maya Novoselska are also among the most spectacular solo arias in the ensemble.

Translated by Elizaria Ruskova

The Sinking of Sozopol (2014)

"The Sinking of Sozopol" – Does the Rain Stop after the Tenth Bottle of Vodka?"

[10/10 · 14 January 2015]

What do a house in the Old Town of Sozopol left to the ravages of time, a middle-aged man, and ten bottles of vodka have in common? The answer is simple – the past. The past, which leaves the house to fall apart alone and uninhabited, leaving the man to go back to his memories and to attempt to make sense of the chaos within them with the help of ten bottles of vodka. And once he's finished them, he expects "that something has to happen." "The Sinking of Sozopol" is a film with no sugar-coating. It shows one human life with all the unpredictable abysses that open up, as well as our after-the-fact attempts to understand and change them. It shows true human weakness and the strength that we need to resign ourselves to things that are already etched in stone and cannot be erased. This is also the reason that the film is so realistic and, I believe, close to the viewer. "The Sinking of Sozopol" is a mirror of our reality and more exactly – of one generation, with its specific life crises, which have affected every single life in one way or another, to some extent or another. There is art that flees from reality, idealizes it, so as to make existing within it easier, to make it more bearable, and other art, which shows it as it is. It puts a friendly arm around our shoulders and says – "Look, you're not alone, you're not the first, and you won't be the last – we all pass through these storms." Sozopol, as shown to us by DOP Konstantin Zankov, is desolate, empty and gloomy – a world that has been built anew. Sozopol with lots of rain, few colors, little presence – a city where you go to die ("What better place than Sozopol?" Chavo asks). The shots – whether outside (gray, pale and symmetrical) or inside in the old house (with its melancholy paintings, naked walls and rough furnishing) – are exceptionally minimalistic and monochromatic. They show absence, rather than presence. I believe that even if they had been black-and-white, they could not have managed to convey that oppressive, doomed feeling more effectively. Despite this, the ending is beautiful and moving. Something happens not after, but along with the tenth bottle of vodka. The path is discovered within others, and not in solitude. And while Sozopol is being swallowed up by an endless storm and slowly sinking into the sea, Chavo raises himself up out of ruin. He remains above the dark, all-encompassing water. The last bottle of vodka is drunk the fastest. And the rain doesn't stop. But right at that moment, that doesn't matter at all. Hristian Yovchev Under the Bridge Magazine, Sofia, 28.11.2014

Evropolis - gradyt na deltata (2010)

"EUROPOLIS, The Town of the Delta" in the Sofia Film Fest

[10/10 · 17 April 2011]

"EUROPOLIS, The Town of the Delta"

Ron Holloway, Berlin, 10 May 2009 http://www.gep.de/interfilm/englisch/interfilm3850_14809.htm Dilys Powell (1901-1995), the venerated doyenne of British criticism, taught me a lesson I never forgot. One afternoon on the Croisette, some three decades ago, we interrupted our discussion on D.W. Griffith and John Ford, two of her favorite directors, whom she had t at length about in the Sunday Times and Punch. I wanted to hear her discuss the pros and cons of what we had seen among the Cannes competition entries. So, brashly, I reached into my shoulder bag and pulled out my freshly penned Variety report on the first half of the festival. It was loaded with pungent flowing commentary for a dozen Cannes entries, some of which appeared to me to be sure candidates for Palme laurels, others just trendsetters. Dilys paged through my lengthy ledger of opinion snorting without raising an eyebrow. Then let me have it right between the eyes: "Ron, one film can make a festival!" She was, of course, right. That year, we hadn't seen anything very impressive up to then at the Palais press screenings. But the "Dilys scissors" wasn't a lesson I could take to heart during the world's most respected film festival. So over the years to follow, I still kept to my shotgun approach to Cannes film criticism on the assumption that this is what our trade newspaper readers wanted to read. To say nothing of a hidden fear that I just might overlook the Golden Palm winner in my scribbling. The case was different, however, when it came to the lesser film festivals. Here, as Dilys pointed out, one film could indeed make a festival memorable. My subsequent reports on these events were often written with the Dilys Powell scissors in my head. And it paid dividends at the 13th Sofia International Film Festival (5-15 March 2009). Sofia was packed with reruns from the major festivals, films that I had already seen and mostly written about. And although the directorial tributes to Jim Jarmusch and Wim Wenders were welcomed relief, still they were rather run-of-the mill for a conscientious critic. The one film that caught my eye was Europolis: The Town on the Delta (Bulgaria/Austria), a documentary by Bulgarian filmmaker Kostadin Bonev. Those 80 minutes stayed with me for the rest of the week. Europolis is based on a 1933 novel with the same title by Eugeniu Botez, an engineer by profession, who was then serving as the commandant of the harbor town of Solina. Botez chose to tell Solina's story under an anonymous pen name – Jean Bart – and with good reason. At that time, his fictional "Europolis" (read: Sulina) on the Danube Delta at the Bulgarian-Romanian border was a booming seaport with ships arriving daily from around the globe. Jean Bart, however, prophecized in no uncertain terms the slow death of Solina, although, back then, this lively town in the early 1930 was populated with a peaceful community of ethnic nationalities, mostly seamen, from across Europe as far away as the British Isles. Jean Bart was soon proved right. Shortly after his controversial book appeared in print, the seaport did begin to die. First, from the aftermath of the World War One. Then, due to the approaching clouds of World War Two, a calamity that would eventually split Europe in two. In Kostadin Bonev's Europolis: The Town on the Delta the ruins of the seaport offer token evidence of what once was. A glance at the town's cemetery reveals a population of Greek pirates, British sailors, French cooks, and Bulgarian coal workers hired to stoke the vessels' boilers, and you name it. A few oldtimers are still around to tell tall tales of times past – among them, a pegleg tailor, a gravedigger, and a former smuggler. Their memories are the stuff of legends and adventure. The story of a lost Europolis before the European Union would fulfill its dream of destiny. Europolis: The Town on the Delta was, indeed, the one film that made Sofia a festival for the books.