Bulgaria,
1998, 110 min
Shown in 1999
CREDITS
- dir
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Andrey Slabakov
- prod
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Andrey Slabakov
- scr
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Andrey Slabakov
- cam
-
Voitcheh Todorov
- editor
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Teodora Vepchek
- cast
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Ernestina Chinova, Naum Chopov, Julia Ognianova
- source
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A.S. Film, Mladost B1. 43 VH3 Et. 7 Apt .45, 1784 Sofia, Bulgaria. FAX: 3592-963-3031
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COMMENTS
Skyy Prize Contender.
OTHER
Classical music and hydraulic presses collide in this marvelously deranged Bulgarian allegory of a mechanized, soulless society where the name Wagner refers to a machine, not a composer. Hardworking factory employee Elena finally receives her new apartment on 639th Street, Block 741, after a “short” ten-year wait. In a landscape of rain, mud and crumbling stone at the edge of the city she discovers her future home, complete with empty cupboards, a used mattress and a painting of an industrial work site. Exhausted, she accidentally falls asleep. Awakening at night, starving, she sets out to meet her new neighbors and begins an odyssey through hunger, darkness and the deranged, mutated dreams of the new, but very, very old, post-Socialist world. Somewhere, Elena must discover the truth hidden within the system and in the process rediscover her own dreams, hopes and future. Described by the director as “a parable of an absurd system,” Wagner sketches a darkly lit world where dream and reality, for better or worse, can no longer be distinguished. Sharp editing, fantastical production design and chilling black-and-white cinematography effectively deepen that unsettling feeling of being caught in someone else’s nightmare.
—Jason Sanders
FACTOID #343
Director Sally Potter was the first person to be honored with the Festival’s Satyajit Ray Award. In 1993 she was interviewed onstage and her new film Orlando was screened. In 2005, she turned the tables by interviewing Peter J. Owens Award recipient Joan Allen.
