VIKTORIA

Boryana does not want a child, certainly not in communist Bulgaria, which she wants to leave for the West as soon as possible. Her daughter Viktoria is born anyway, in 1979, and she is born without a navel. The Party declares the girl “Baby of the Decade”, the state showers her with privileges, a red telephone connects Viktoria directly to the head of state. For nine years she lives as a child of socialism, while her mother watches and says nothing. Then, in 1989, the Eastern Bloc collapses, and with it Viktoria’s special status. In “Viktoria” (Bulgaria, 2014), a Bulgarian-Romanian co-production, Maya Vitkova tells of three generations of women and a love that will not flow.

Vitkova, herself born in Sofia in 1978, has translated her memories of the end of communism into a narrative with surreal interludes and a recurring motif of milk and rain. It premiered in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition at Sundance in 2014; it was the first Bulgarian film ever to screen there. “Viktoria” was shown at Around the World in 14 Films in Berlin in 2014.