Boris I

I just watched "Boris I" episodes for the second time in a month and surely I will watch them again with other Bulgarian fellows. Needless to say, if you are looking for a "Kingdom of Heaven"-type of heavy medieval battles or sword fight and chivalry/fancy/ridiculous-type of "medieval" fashion from "Knight's Tale", you definitely will not find neither of them in this movie. The idea of "Boris I" is very simple – to bring to live one of the most important periods in the defining of the Bulgarian nation and to re-awake some almost forgotten accords in the Bulgarian soul. Let all "statement"-type of dialogs aside (typical for some Bulgarian movies), I believe the idea of the movie is well accomplished and the importance of the conversion into the Eastern Orthodox fate is beautifully recreated. In fact, it appears to me that the power of the first episode is overlooked by the communist oversight back in 1983 and the importance of the adoption of the Eastern Orthodox fate is truly conveyed (especially when Boris-Mihail meet with the cave-priest), aside from the strong political reasoning of the time, put upfront. The second episode as also well done and the great deeds of the three students are represented powerfully.

After all, this movie is created as almost pure historical re-enactment of key events from the Bulgarian history for Bulgarians and no foreigner will neither understand it, nor like it. Well, I'm Bulgarian so it works perfectly for me and my soul. I hope it does the same for yours.

What an awesome guy! Not just an emperor, not just a saint (called "Equal to the Apostles"-he gave refuge to Cyril and Methodius and helped develop the Cyrilic alphabet and encouraged development of Slavic literature.