Warming Up Yesterday´s Lunch

Colour, 35 mm
Bulgaria, Macedonia, 2002, 98 min
Section: East of the West

Synopsis

In 1913 Macedonia was torn into three parts. The tragic fate of the country cruelly marked the life of Katerina, an ordinary woman from the town Prilep. She tells her story to a television director from Skopje. When she was born, her father – a Communist – was imprisoned in Serbia. A Serbian teacher mutilated her for refusing to write in the Serbian alphabet. She lived through Bulgarianization and German occupation. Her father died as a partisan and she was imprisoned for resistance. Then Tito and Stalin became objects of forced adoration. Katerina fell in love with a soldier named István, a Hungarian from Szabadka. Communist Youth members Djako and Tzena redeem their prior collaboration through Communist zealousness. They have Katerina arrested as an agent who was recruited by István. When they find weapons in her house, from the period of her father’s resistance activities, they send her to a concentration camp for four years. After Stalin’s death, the prisoners are released. On the train Katerina meets Bojin, the man to whom she was promised as a child... The elderly Katerina lives in a mill with Bojin. She hasn’t spoken about her past in front of a camera until now. The town is upset by her testimony...

About the director

Kostadin Bonev (b. 1951) specialized in film and television direction at Sofia’s VITIZ theatre and drama institute (1990) after graduating in theatre science (1980). He worked for television as a director and assistant director, and has shot several documentaries, most of which earned him important foreign and domestic awards. His first feature Warming Up Yesterday’s Lunch (2002) is based on the novel of the same name by Mile Nedelkovski.