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© 2026 The Couch Critic
Browse 32 movies from Bulgarian National Film Center
It's 1980. Malin is fatherless, angry, and in trouble. At 20, he's spent a year in jail for assaulting a lover of Lily, his mother. In her desk he finds a soldier's photograph and assumes he's found his father. He confronts the man, now a teacher, and gets nowhere. At home again, he mocks his mother. Finally, she tells him her grim story, from the year before his birth. We see a people's court, where Lily's parents seek justice for their grandchild to be. We follow Lily to a prison camp, to the city where she's told to inform on the only person who's been kind, to an asylum, and finally to her current poverty and loneliness. How will Malin respond to these revelations?
Nov 1993
From his poor childhood to his rise to fame, from his triumphs to his failures, from Paris to New York, discover the exceptional journey of an artist. Intimate, intense, fragile and indestructible, devoted to his art until the very end, here is one of the most immortal singers of all time: MONSIEUR AZNAVOUR.
Oct 2024
11-year-old Misha is coming from Russia to Athens during the 2004 Olympic Games to live with his mother. He does not know there is a father waiting for him.
Apr 2017
This thought-provoking documentary reveals the consequences of selling and exposing your identity online and explores how virtual relationships impact real-life ones.
Oct 2025
A police inspector frames an innocent boy as terrorist, but is later forced to conspire with his victim as both create an intricate web of lies to steal money from the incompetent government bodies.
Feb 2022
In 651, Khan Kubrat died and the Khazars accelerated their raids upon Great Bulgaria. His five sons split the Bulgarian tribe and each led his to find new land where they could live in peace. Khan Asparukh, the youngest son, went west and, after an arduous journey lasting for years, southward across the River Danube, into Moesia. In 680-81, in alliance with the Slavs, he inflicted stunning defeats on the Roman legions and forced the Byzantine Empire to recognize the formation of the new state of Bulgaria in the lands where it still exists today.
Jan 1981
Two schools, located in one building, are in a state of war. Alex and his friends assume the constant fighting with the elite school as a social riot, while Stephan, the literature teacher, desperately tries to show the guys another solution. Is it possible to convince them?
Oct 2011
Close to bankruptcy, Irena, the owner of a struggling pig farm in a tiny post-Communist town, finds a surprising benefactor in a handsome American man who appears to be the answer to all her prayers.
May 2018
The film is a romantic comedy, inspired by the fairy-tale atmosphere of the Hofmann fantasies.
Oct 2010
Sofia, the 90's. Emilia's colorful group of friends are portrayed in a series of separate but intertwined stories. On its own each story peers into the life of a single downtrodden person. Viewed as a whole, they portray a common struggle of coming to terms with the uncertain world these people live in, and how it all weighs on Emilia.
Oct 1996
Financial upheaval forces a teenage deaf girl, Valmira 16, to leave her progressive Athens school and return to her father's struggling island where she is confronted by the danger of prejudice and intolerance, most shockingly -- her own.
Nov 2022
A concert to celebrate Bulgaria joining the EU is being planned at the Embassy in London and it is the job of VARADIN, the new ambassador, to ensure the Queen attends. But with corrupt staff, criminal gangs operating out of the kitchen, falling in love with a stripper and a little misunderstanding with a PR firm that provides look-alike royalties - his simple task turns into a chaotic nightmare.
Apr 2010
A cinematic journey into the heart of the Europe through the life-changing experience of young participants of Erasmus - the most ambitious mobility programme of our times. The film’s characters leave the comfort zone of their country, to prove to themselves that they can survive in a foreign environment, overcoming their fears and adapting to different cultures and mentalities. Set against the current European crisis, fueled by unprecedented youth unemployment and fears about the refugee situation, their journeys offer a bird’s-eye view of a continent in transition, giving a sense of what the future holds.
Jun 2019
Moth is freed on parole after spending time in prison on a wrongful conviction of murder. Jailed shortly before the Bulgarian communist coup of 1944, he now finds himself in a new and alien world— the totalitarian Sofia of the 60s. His first night of freedom draws the map of a diabolical city full of decaying neighborhoods, gloomy streets, and a bizarre parade of characters.
Jun 2008
Bulgaria-based director Kevork Aslanyan’s European Short Film Festival-winning sci-fi short sees a man trying to overcome an obstacle of gravitas for love. In a dystopian post-communist world, Constantine and his father Atanas share a small flat in a run-down apartment block. A tragic accident has disturbed gravity on Earth beyond repair, so everyone weighing less than 120 kilos flies up into space. With only 60kg body weight, Constantine cannot go outside, nor does he want to. Stuck in the flat, at the mercy of the electrical mood swings of a household gravitational normalizer, Constantine leads an almost normal life. He is content spending the days looking at the world through his window. Until the beautifully plump stewardess moving in next door changes everything.
Jun 2015
Boško Tokin, the hero, was the first filmmaker in the Balkans and the first in the world to go to prison for it.
Grigor, a nondescript, naive man whom everyone mockingly calls Gringo, begins to hear a voice. This voice claims to represent the truer part of him. And it begins to urge him to avenge the undeserved humiliation and abuse he is constantly subjected to. In doing so, he will break with outdated prejudices, become a new man. Grigor resists, but can he resist temptation and the truth of evil? The voice falls silent when the crime is committed. Has Grigor himself committed it? And what kind of man is he then?
Apr 2008
During an imaginary actors exam, in order to choose the best, the jury utilizes immoral ways of selection – spying, making conflicts, humiliating the applicants – in short, taking advantage of its power.
Jul 2007
Ursus is a story of three outcasts—Georgian unemployed film director, Ukrainian ex-stuntman and a Canadian female fighter for the wild animals' rights—making their desperate journey from Tbilisi, the capital of ex-Soviet Georgia plunged into a civil war, to Berlin at the beginning of 1992. Each of the three characters pursues their own goal without even knowing how much their fates are intertwined.
Feb 2021
In a remote Sámi village high in the mountains, 20-year-old Ejva inherits her late father's reindeer herd. As she struggles to keep the herd thriving, local leader Heaika develops romantic feelings for her, and though hesitant, she feels compelled to accept. But everything changes when Nejla, Heaika's cousin, arrives, and Ejva discovers true love for the first time. Betrayed and jealous, Heaika reacts harshly, leaving Ejva with a condition that makes her hands shake uncontrollably, threatening her ability to care for the herd. Now, Ejva must find a way to reclaim control over her life and her future.
Sep 2026