Crayfish

Colour, 35 mm
Bulgaria, 2009, 108 min
Section: East of the West - Films in Competition

Synopsis

Unemployed friends Doka and Bonza haven’t managed to gain a foothold in the new economic climate. They liven up their inactivity with infantile distractions. Big shots from the former regime have meanwhile built up new careers, having caught the crest of the privatisation wave. Adopting the appropriate cynicism and employing mafia tactics, they line their pockets and reinforce their position. Matanov and Tsonchev are contenders as intermediaries in the sale of an ironworks in Sinistra, which a Greek client has his eye on. Both want to get as much as possible out of this transaction, even at the cost of doing away with the competition. The rivals assign trustworthy consultants to engineer the venture, who then appoint compromised flunkies to get the job done. In a wholly random selection, the role of anonymous pawns is entrusted to Doka and Bonza. With a lucrative reward in their sights, they set off for Sinistra, unaware of what they are getting themselves into... The confrontation of the protagonists’ incompatible worlds is presented as archetypal, while the analysis of their interaction is founded on an objective description of the environment and conditions which today breed commonplace crimes.

About the director

Ivan Cherkelov (b. 1957, Sofia) studied film direction at VITIZ (1982). He captured the problematic issues of the transformation process in Bulgaria with formal ingenuity in the films Pieces of Love (Parcheta lyubov, 1982), Rolling Stones (Tarkalyashti se kameni, 1995) and Glass Marbles (Stakleni topcheta, 1999), whose screenplays he also wrote. The collection of film stories Christmas Tree Upside Down (Obarnata elha, 2006), which he co-directed with Vasil Zhivkov, won the Special Jury Prize ex aequo together with the Czech film Beauty in Trouble (Kráska v nesnázích) at the Karlovy Vary IFF in 2006. His film Crayfish was shot in 2009.