07/02/2025 - Pepa Hristova's documentary debut feature attempts to conduct a terrain study, focused on a picturesque mountainous region in Bulgaria, where ancient rituals mingle with current politics

Having lived outside her native Bulgaria for 27 years and cultivated an identity between cultures and places, longtime photographer and filmmaking newcomer Pepa Hristova has seemingly adopted the gaze of a detached observer – curious enough to discover peculiarities that remain unseen at first glance, yet also a passerby accustomed to picking out highlights and moving on. Her first full-length cinematic effort Strandzha, which just celebrated its world premiere within the Harbour section of the International Film Festival Rotterdam, weaves together snapshots of striking places and characters – wild nature inhabited by outcasts, outlaws, and daredevils dancing on embers; borderline people in a border territory. It strolls through various micro-worlds without penetrating them, portrays humans and circumstances without truly engaging with them, and touches on topics without delving any deeper. Like a flâneur with a camera, Hristova wanders in search of fleeting moments that capture her and the viewers’ attention, only for them to fade rapidly from memory.

If we can speak of a narrative at all, it oscillates between the vanishing of a forest on the Bulgarian Strandzha mountain due to illegal logging, mourned by an ex-soldier; a psychiatric sanatorium for abandoned adults with no one to lean on except the dilapidated institution; remnants of a rundown building frequented by local youngsters; and the external EU border between Bulgaria and Turkey, marked by a high metal fence yet somehow crossed by refugees. The stories, formed through provoked or overheard dialogues, feel more like excerpts scratching the surface of the past and local traditions without ever providing insights into any context, and this despite the film’s ambition, as expressed in the synopsis, to “embody the trauma, spiritual power, and timeless history of a place that transcends time and borders.” Perhaps due to the filmmaker’s attitude – one that feels rather superficially curious than genuinely driven to understand – the approach toward the people who enter the camera’s scope is ethically questionable. The women from the psychiatric hospital, disguised as the local forest nymphs samodivas, and the fire walkers known as nestinari, remain exoticised details without much further elucidation. Meanwhile, the ex-soldier is either caught or prompted into admitting on camera that he killed border crossers in exchange for army leave, before reappearing drunk toward the end of the film. By disclosing his vulnerable confessions and circumstances in such a way, the film breaks an unwritten yet crucial rule of documentary cinema: a “fallen” person should not be simply exposed, as the dignity of those in front of the camera is sacred and must be somewhat preserved.

Regardless of the film's captivating imagery of dazzling greenery and cows at sunset, as well as a meditative rhythm that could lull brain activity, one inevitably wonders whether we truly needed yet another film depicting the margins of the Balkans without offering any new viewpoint, merely repeating already established patterns. Strandzha is clearly made for viewers unfamiliar with the region, yet it fails to enlighten them much, as if the filmmaking team itself learned little throughout the process, beyond their previous theoretical research about the place. The location remains practically anonymous, the film impactless, and the audience indifferent.

Strandzha is a co-production between Germany’s Fünferfilm and Bulgaria’s Agitprop.