Angel Wagenstein(1922-2023)

Angel Wagenstein (1922 - 2023) was a Bulgarian-Jewish filmmaker, novelist, playwright, civic and political activist and distinguished intellectual. During the WWII he was interned in a labour camp for Jews. He managed to escape from it and joined an anti-fascist group, but soon he was arrested and sentenced to death. Since the execution was delayed, he survived. Wagenstein graduated in film screenwriting from the Gerasimov Institute for Cinematography in Moscow with diploma number 1 and worked as a screenwriter for the Bulgarian Cinematography and for the DEFA film studio. He authored over 50 screenplays for feature films, documentaries, cartoons and theatre plays. His film "Alarm", was the first Bulgarian film ever awarded by an international jury - the one of Karlovy Vary Film Festival in 1951. His film "Stars" directed by Konrad Wolf, proved a sensation at Cannes Film Festival in 1959, and it was awarded the Special Jury Prize. Being the first significant and influential film about Holocaust, it was distributed in 72 countries. Further films for DEFA were to follow, such as the adaptation of Lion Feuchtwanger's "Goya - or the Hard Way to Enlightenment" (1971), also directed by Wolf, which reveals the horror of Stalinist ideology mirrored in the horror of the Inquisition. Wagenstein authored the script and directed the first film about the War in Vietnam commissioned for ARD. During the Prague Spring, he shot in Prague the film "Aesop" (1970), considered by the authorities as allegory of the coinciding events for which he was persecuted. He was a member of the jury at the 30th Berlin International Film Festival. In his capacity as one of the most prominent intellectuals in Bulgaria, Angel Wagenstein was invited to the famed breakfast hosted by Francois Mitterrand, President of France, with 12 Bulgarian dissidents, held in 1981 in Sofia. Despite his communist convictions he fought against the regime and for the installment of the democracy. Between 1990-1991, he was part of the Great National Assembly which adopted the Constitution of Bulgaria. He started writing novels at the age of 75. Wagenstein's characters are like trees that bend and twist in the storm of history, damaged but unbroken.