Films - Zift

Zift

Film Info

Bulgaria 2008 | 92 min. Director: Javor Gardev

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Zift

Synopsis

Moth is freed on parole after spending time in prison on wrongful conviction. All hell breaks loose as soon as he walks out of jail. His frantic chase after the truth draws the map of a diabolical totalitarian city. The story ends inside the gravediggers’ trailer where all secrets are revealed.

Cast & Crew

Director

Javor Gardev
Producer

Georgi Dimitrov, Ilian Djevelekov, Matey Konstantinov
Screenwriter

Vladislav Todorov
Director of photography

Emil Christov
Main Cast

Zachary Baharov (Moth), Tanya Ilieva (Ada), Vladimir Penev (Slug), Mihail Mutafov (Van Wurst The Eye), Djoko Rossich (Father Todor)

Director's comment

Contemporary Bulgarian film deals mainly with everyday-life experiences or engages in constructing national identity drawing on the folklore tradition or revisiting traumatic moments of history. So, I thought that in such artistic context a radical genre attack could be refreshing and trigger a productive debate. I picked one of the sharpest genres of cinema and gave it a strong absurdist spin. The action is set in the midst of the ominously monumental spaces of the totalitarian state surrounded by a bleak zone of urban life packed with roguish riffraff and witty lowlife. We remember the days of “spotless” communism with our skin, its pompous ugliness and exuberant absurdities. So I decided to frame the banality of communist evil, to “estrange” it on screen, to render it utterly odd by using a set of genre devices -- the hardboiled cliché of neo-noir. This mix allowed me to walk the knife-edge between auteur and genre cinema.