Eastern Plays (2009)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

the audience applauded

Good movie but grossly overrated

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

This is the most important Bulgarian movie for the past 20 years. I highly recommend it for everyone who have never watched anything from this country. The acting is honest and breathtaking. The story is simple and so real, that can make you cry. The cinematography work is very stylish and keeps you close to the characters from the beginning to the end. Eastern Plays is an absolutely stunning piece of filmmaking. This is the movie that Bulgaria needed for so many years and for so many reasons. I am sure that such a film can be made just once in a generation. When i've watched it for the first time, i was deeply moved and shocked, because i knew that the movie will be good, but i've never expected something so strong and real. If i have to be honest i have lost hope that people in Bulgaria have the courage and will to talk so direct for such important subjects as drugs, racism and the broken bond between contemporary Bulgarian generations. Especially the filmmakers. And that's why i think this movie appears in a very important moment not just for the Bulgarian film industry, but for the Bulgarian society at all.

Just watched Eastern Plays.. Guys this movie is s*it! I hate to say it with respect to Christo Christov(God rest his soul) whose performance was maybe the only good thing about the movie. I am so tired of all those "intellectual wanna-be" Bulgarian movies, that are made to be understood only by the author and need at least half an hour explanation. It is enough to read the synopsis, don't waste time to watch the whole thing. The original concept is good, so I cant believe the director was so bad that he couldn't manage to develop it. It was hard for me to watch it till the end and I was skipping through the numerous times when nothing was happening, which was half of the movie!!!.. And don't you dare to tell me I didn't understand it, it is true, I did not. There was nothing in this movie that will make me use my brain to understand the concept of it. It was the same pointless depressing reel that we're so used to watch("Shivachki"). The soundtrack was good (Nasekomix), but it wasn't well used. After watching "The World Is Big and Salvation Lurks Around the Corner" and "Zift", I thought there's still a future for Bulgarian cinema.. but honestly Eastern Plays brought me back to the reality. I will still however see Mission London. Wish me luck on this one =D Overall, if I could give this movie less than a star, I would've. I think that eastern European nationalism(which apparently the movie should be condemning) created this whole euphoria in Bulgaria over the movie, which I understand, but I don't think it's an actual reason to give a higher score for this movie. Still.. Rest In Peace Christo Christov

It has been quite some time since a film genuinely moved me. This past week or so, I have sat through and enjoyed, to varying degrees, Scorsese's Shutter Island and Polanski's The Ghost Writer. Both were polished, well-made, clever films (the latter perhaps slightly more than the former), but I will soon forget them. I don't think I'm going to forget Eastern Plays anytime soon. This Bulgarian film by Kamen Kalev is, well - why beat around the bush ? - a great work of art. Superbly shot in a Sofia filled with graffiti-covered buildings and vacant lots, Eastern Plays tells the story of Itso, an addict on methadone who has to drink beer more or less constantly to dull his pain. Quite by chance, he intervenes when a family of Turkish tourists gets attacked and beaten by a gang of Neo-Fascist thugs (led by a terrifying Alexander "The Indian" Radanov). This gradually leads to a relationship between Itso and the breathtakingly beautiful Isil (Saadet Isil Askoy), whose innocent, optimistic spirituality gradually begins to lift Itso out of the painful doldrums of his beery existence. I don't know what to praise most about this film : its portrayal of a modern Bulgaria adrift between racist youth gangs and football hooligans, the parents completely out of touch with the world of their children ; the incredibly true-to-life performance by Christo Christov, who died of an overdose before the film was finished shooting ? I think finally it is the luminous presence of Saadet Isil Askoy, who brings a sincerity and optimism to the film's grim context, as she tells Itso that we are all living in a time where people are sick inside, but that she feels a change is coming. This is not just a film about contemporary Bulgaria, although it is that as well. It is a film that captures a certain Zeitgeist of the early 21st century, in which, especially in post-Communist Eastern Europe, a restless youth with nothing more to believe in attempts to fill the gap inside them as best they can : with drugs, alcohol, headbanger rock, neo-fascist thuggery, or, in a few precious, fragile cases, with art and music. I have not recently seen a more deeply moving scene in a film than the one is which a desperate Itso consults his psychiatrist : all he wants to do, he says, is find the goodness within himself. He wishes he could radiate light like a crystal, and love all human beings, but he does not know how.

This film is real, touchable; and at the same time poetic, touching! It reveals the condition of a lost soul of Sofia (the city), a young man who is leaving narcotics behind but there is nothing else in our modern life here to replace them. Boredom, inertia, dissatisfaction, pointlessness, emotional routine plague the souls in Sofia of all generations, young or old. Only love might give hope...The character is looking for this one little piece of love, maybe hidden somewhere in his heel...The film makes keen and exact observations at people, at the cityscape, at the relations in Bulgaria. Although it tells about drug addiction, about skinhead groups, it felt like it is coming from my own life! I could recognise friends, parents, the apartments i've lived in. The details are 100% there. The actor play is very very strong (with the exception of Stefan Danailov's student, maybe on purpose?). The young man is himself, not an actor. He is showing his own life, his guts, which makes 'Eastern plays' even more dramatic.The camera work is incredible - its an art photographer's capture of Sofia. Some will say it is ugly, for me it is ravishingly beautiful, dignified. Sofia becomes a serene participant in the story. The music is a participant as well! 'Inject me love' was not composed for the film yet it fits it perfectly. Maybe the movie will put the "underground" Bulgarian electroacoustic group Nassekomix on the world stage?