The second of the two Balkan feature films at the festival, Bulgarian filmmaker Stephan Komandarev’s powerful and timely drama Blaga’s Lessons, offers another portrait of a determined elderly woman. But if Serbian Marklena is still bound to her authority as a politician, Blaga Naumova, a retired 70-year-old teacher, is about to completely abandon her strict morals.
After 30 years away from the silver screen, Eli Skorcheva brilliantly builds her role as Blaga, widowed following the death of her policeman husband and in need of money for his gravesite. As the vile cemetery salesman puts it, the market dictates and Blaga has few options open to her, having panicked and fallen for a phone scam in the film’s opening sequence. Her son, who works as a gig-economy driver in the US, cannot do much online to help her either.
Winner of the main award at the traditional Karlovy Vary Film Festival, Blaga’s Lessons, full of twists and turns, darkly combines thriller elements with tragicomic coincidences. Powerfully interpreted by Skorcheva in every scene, Blaga is a pensioner living alone in a concrete apartment block in the city of Shumen and giving language lessons to immigrants. There’s nothing great about being retired in Bulgaria (either) – it could lead a person to some pretty desperate measures.
Timo Malmi