What I particularly liked (and I know friends of mine who did as well) in this movie is that it is not a movie about a person, or a story, but mostly an aesthetic vision of a city... which happens to be my city. The storyline is almost missing: apart from the sad coincidence that one brother took part in the beating of another, there is not much of a narrative thread and the entire movie is just a sequence of impressions of present-day Sofia, including the people living in it. Hristo Hristov became the focus of the film because he represented a particular type of Sofianites (actually he was born in Burgas but that does not make him less of a Sofianite since this is the city where he painted): artists who have received serious formation, have developed their own style, have reached the level of creators of unquestionably valuable works, and yet have found no chance to live on their art and be successful. Hristo was not the first, and will not be the last of generations of creative persons who had to find various exits from the difficult situation the last twenty years placed us all in. He chose drugs and in the real life passed away even before the movie was finished. But his sad story is one of hope, too, since the real-life Hristo, even posthumously, proved that recognition can come (and we are now expecting the long-postponed exhibition of his art), while the movie-character Hristo showed to his younger brother that there is alternative to violence and hatred, and that there is enough beauty around us to save us from despair.
Review of Eastern Plays
