02/09/2025 - VENICE 2025: The Bulgarian helmer elaborates on the sociopolitical message behind his latest feature, while also sharing insights into the development of the plot and the casting process

(© 2025 Fabrizio de Gennaro for Cineuropa - fadege.it, @fadege.it)

Stephan Komandarev, currently Bulgaria’s most prolific filmmaker recognised internationally, continues to tell stories about the underprivileged while addressing social injustice in his latest feature, Made in EU [+see also:
film review
interview: Stephan Komandarev
film profile], which has just premiered in the Venezia Spotlight section of the Venice Film Festival. We asked him to share insights into the film’s narrative development, as well as his thoughts on the “miserabilist” image of Bulgarian cinema.

Cineuropa: In your trilogy about the Bulgarian post-communist transition, you were critical of corruption and capitalism, whereas in Made in EU, one senses a more specific criticism of the European Union. What was left unsaid that you wanted the audience to feel?
Stephan Komandarev: This is not the European Union I dreamed of in the early 1990s, when it stood for solidarity, freedom and equal rights. Thirty-five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, divisions remain – East and West, North and South, elites and ordinary people… The distrust is still there. The film tackles COVID-19, but it is not about that. Its real subject is another pandemic: globalisation, which has deepened inequality between countries and communities.

The film was inspired by real-life cases. How did reality feed into the script?
The “Clean Clothes” campaign, which revealed that working conditions for seamstresses in Bulgaria are comparable to those in India and Cambodia, as well as the exposés about them reportedly being denied sick leave and subjected to a bonus-payment blackmail system, served as the basis from which to develop the script, but we did not simply recreate the real events. My co-writer Simeon Ventsislavov and I created the plot by drawing on many interviews with seamstresses conducted for the campaign; we also visited factories, including one owned by a German entrepreneur. The protagonist, Iva, is not based on a single prototype, but is a collective character, shaped by various testimonies.

Tell us more about the casting for Made in EU. How did you choose the actors, especially Gergana Pletnyova for the lead role?
I had been thinking of working with Gergana for a while – she has a wonderful, cinematic face. We rehearsed, and I was sure she was the right one for the role. Todor Kotsev, still a student, gave a fantastic performance as her son, while Martina Peneva, as his girlfriend, was a real discovery. We worked with the actors on the script for months, improvising and re-writing together. Many great ideas came from them, which lent the film authenticity.

From a geopolitical perspective, Bulgaria’s economy seems trapped in the role of a cheap labour provider on the EU’s periphery. But isn’t its role in cinema similar, undermining its wider potential? Western funding bodies and audiences seem to expect “miserabilist” stories that portray social hardship.
I don’t think so. My films are not based on what is expected. I make films about what concerns me. Of course, political cinema is part of Europe, but it is my choice, not an obligation. And actually, Made in EU was rejected by both Creative Europe – MEDIA and Eurimages on a project level. My favourite directors, like the Dardenne brothers, also deal with social issues. They show that the West is not all nice and shiny either. For me, cinema must try to change reality, and speak about morality and values.

As for the Bulgarian situation, yes – in the last 30 years, Bulgaria has lost one-fifth of its population without war, the most highly educated and hardworking of us. Meanwhile, our industries were destroyed, unlike in Hungary or the Czech Republic. What remains is subcontracting for big brands, thus exploiting cheap labour in workshops like the ones shown in the film. In small, isolated towns, people have no choice: either they work in the factory or they leave. This creates a form of local feudalism, where survival depends on pleasing the local elites.

A memorable phrase in the film is that Bulgaria is the “periphery of the periphery.” Could you expand on that?
I was 23 when communism fell, so I’ve lived under both systems. I often quote the doctor in the film, Ivaylo Hristov’s character: “Everything we were told about communism turned out to be a lie, and everything we were told about capitalism turned out to be absolutely true.” That’s the paradox. We were promised a bright future, but we ended up on the periphery of the periphery – socially, economically and culturally. My films are an attempt to reflect and resist that reality.

In an interview for local media, you said Bulgaria is still a better country to live in than many European ones, partly because it is less digitised. Could this become the subject of a future film?
As it happens, my next project, The Block Universe, which was part of the last Berlinale Co-Production Market and will hopefully be filmed during autumn 2026, is about the digital world versus the real one. I am fascinated by how digitalisation affects human relationships, loneliness and the atomisation of society. I see it through my children, who are 17 and 22, and through my teaching. In Bulgaria, you can still knock on your neighbour’s door to borrow a glass of sugar. Relationships are more direct, more human. That is something worth preserving.