Podslon

I didn't expect to like it that much. One of the few contemporary good Bulgarian films.

Slow to get going, but a thoroughly decent slice-of-life observational comedy that picks up pace as it rolls on. The gulf in expectations between parents and their offspring is laid bare; the moment when children become adolescents, or juvenile delinquents, and how parents adapt to their changing role.

There is no great revelation, no Eureka moment or Damascene conversion, just a day that was different to those that went before and a feeling that the ones to come will be different too. This has parallels in the Bulgarian sporting history, association with the USSR, and minor worries about EU membership (the film was released in 2010. Bulgaria joined in 2007, but characters speak as if they had not yet entered the union).

The film feels stagey at times, with limited locations and characters taking turns to speak lines - sometimes the response to a comment has to wait until someone else has had a turn to speak - but this ensures nothing is lost. Some nice camera angles help the action move around within the family home, so we can follow characters from room to room, while rapid camera movement when the father finds his son returned help show his disorientation - his home is not as he expected.

Bulgaria does not have a huge presence in world cinema, although Netflix seems to be addressing this with Zift and Omnipresent. Shelter is probably the most accessible of the three, and deserves a watch.

All the European countries had their film waves - Italian,french,English,polish,czech,German,romanian waves, but no Bulgarian.

To have a "wave" in cinema you need a group of films which are alike, at least five let's say. Until now in Bulgaria we do not have five films in a same year or even two or three years which are alike.

All of Bulgarian films are strongly personal and not like the others. Their characters are strong personalities closed in their own life.

Podslon (2010) is film about the lack of communication within the family and specially between generations before and after communist regime. This is a big theme for Bulgaria and I only hope that other four films will join this "first of a kind" Bulgarian film and will create at last The Bularian New Wave in Cinema.

For the last two years this didn't happened and it seems like lost cause.Anyway I strongly recommend Podslon(2010) for being a real cultural artifact from contemporary cultural discourse in Bulgaria.

Podslon(2010) shows the quiet and grey "real" of Bulgarian life without trying to create "hyperreal" cinema experience,just to amuse audience.

If you want to see the real Bulgaria,watch Podslon!