Acclaimed Bulgarian directing duo Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov return to the Karlovy Vary Film Festival competition with “Black Money for White Nights.” They won the Crystal Globe in 2019 with ‘The Father,” which repped Bulgaria in the foreign-language film Oscar race.
An indictment of modern Bulgarian corruption and moral decay set in 2022, “Black Money for White Nights” centers on Marina, a nurse, and Gosha, a railway agent, a couple in their late 60s who have spent years collecting small bribes in order to have enough money for a vacation to Russia to experience the fabled White Nights of summer — Marina’s dream. But their plans start to break down when the travel agent they used vanishes with their money, and Russia invades Ukraine. There’s no trip, and they realize that no authority — police or government or even an underworld fixer — can help. Everything is lies.
The filmmakers wanted to examine the people whose emotional loyalty to Russia is so strong that their moral compass becomes distorted, “even when reality changed dramatically in 2022, these people kept protecting the story they’ve chosen to believe after the propaganda, and that was the starting point. We were interested in what happens inside these people,” says Grozeva.
