Blaga’s Lessons
New Directors/New Films 2024
April 3 - 14, 2024
Widowed 70-year-old schoolteacher Blaga (a brilliant Eli Skorcheva) falls prey to a frightening telephone scam, setting off a chain of events in a tautly conceived thriller that skillfully captures the feeling of a bleak post-Communist society beset by corruption.
Seventy-year-old retired schoolteacher Blaga (Eli Skorcheva) has recently lost her beloved husband, a former police officer well-known in the austere, small northern Bulgarian town where she still lives. Determined to purchase a substantial gravesite and headstone for the deceased, the stern-minded, no-nonsense widow continues to work, giving Bulgarian language lessons to immigrants. However, Blaga’s already precarious world is overturned when one afternoon she falls prey to a frightening telephone scam. This is merely the beginning of a tautly conceived thriller that skillfully captures the feeling of a bleak post-Communist society beset by corruption—in both criminal and official capacities. Stephan Komandarev’s entirely gripping film rests on the ever-strengthening shoulders of veteran actress Skorcheva, whose remarkable journey from weather-beaten victimhood to aggressive resolve persuasively transforms the film into a provocative story of individual morality in a world gone wrong.
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