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© 2026 The Couch Critic
Browse 32 movies from Bulgarian National Film Center
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
One of the most ambitious Bulgarian projects in recent years, Heights is an adaptation of Milen Ruskov's novel of the same name, published in 2011. The film explores the Bulgarian realities of the 1870s a few years before the war, that would liberate the country from the Ottoman occupation. Directed by Victor Bojinov and adapted by Neli Dimitrova, the story follows Gicho a young man in a revolutionary group led by Dimitar Obshti, a real-life revolutionary fighting against the Turks. After a successful train robbery Obshti entrust Gicho with a special mission: to deliver a letter to Vasil Levski, the country's most famous freedom fighter, now considered hero and dubbed The Apostle of Freedom.
Nov 2017
Secretary of the most influential Communist Party in the Western world, Enrico Berlinguer challenged the international balance by seeking to bring the Communists to government in Italy and achieve socialism in a democratic country. From 1973, when he escaped an attack by the Bulgarian secret services, to the assassination of his main ally Aldo Moro in 1978, not forgetting his trips to Moscow and the covers of Time: the story of a man who wanted to change the world, but failed.
This is a story about the life of a lonely person, who is striving for happiness and makes life meaningful for "the other happy men".
Dec 2003
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
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
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
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
This thought-provoking documentary reveals the consequences of selling and exposing your identity online and explores how virtual relationships impact real-life ones.
Nov 2025
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
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 young fairy leads a boring life at the fairytale castle. She’d rather be a witch and get really messy. She therefore decides to run off to the witch forest.
Oct 2025
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
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
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
The film is a romantic comedy, inspired by the fairy-tale atmosphere of the Hofmann fantasies.
Oct 2010
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
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
February 1954: ten mass graves with over 500 bodies are found in the region of Sofia, Bulgaria. Experts say they were killed and the deaths occurred in 1925. In one of the graves a glass eye is found - the glass eye of the poet Geo Milev.
Mar 2022
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