After having portrayed wounded dignity morphing into cold-blooded indifference born of desperation in his Crystal Globe winner Blaga’s Lessons [+lee también:
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Komandarev’s seventh feature, Made in EU, currently showing in the Venezia Spotlight section of the 82nd Venice Film Festival, is less turbulent in its plot twists, but equally categorical in portraying life in the Bulgarian countryside as a dead-end situation. This time, however, the critique extends not only to local corruption and moral degradation, but also to the geopolitical and socioeconomic configuration in which this outlying country of the European Union has been placed – it’s a depopulated territory, reduced to a reservoir of cheap labour and stripped of rights by its systemic deadlock. And if in Directions [+lee también:
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ficha de la película] Euroscepticism was conveyed through subtle hints, Made in EU’s criticism of the dismissive attitude towards the “poor neighbours” within the European community is outspoken, while all illusions that emigrating to Western Europe is a worthwhile choice are dispelled.

The pale, crushed Iva (Gergana Pletnyova), who has the aura of a martyr and the fate of a widowed Cinderella whom no prince will ever come to save, lives in a godforsaken Bulgarian town and works as a seamstress in a local factory run by an Italian investor who pays his workers mere coins to produce fancy clothing for major brands. Denied sick leave despite her persistent fever, she unknowingly conceals her COVID-19 symptoms until she is hospitalised and given a diagnosis that brands her as the area’s “patient zero”. The media and the public marginalise her; her son’s plans to emigrate to Germany inevitably fall through; her brother (Gerasim Georgiev-Gero), who manages the factory, becomes her greatest enemy; and the only person who understands her, the devoted Dr Rusev (Ivaylo Hristov), is doomed to fall victim to his profession. Iva’s days in her hometown are numbered, but wherever she goes, she will remain a member of invisible service staff for the privileged classes in the supposedly egalitarian European space.

Anger on behalf of the dispossessed is a palpable subtext in this film, gradually intensifying until the finale, when the European anthem “Ode to Joy” is hummed in a bitterly ironic key. It’s a fully justified anger, which, however, is unleashed without any further analysis and is therefore doomed to remain unresolved. It is directed at capitalist ethics and the brazen application of their most brutal manifestations on the periphery of the European Union, treated as the Third World, without a deeper examination of Bulgaria’s own contribution to the situation – apart from a few hints at local spinelessness and lack of integrity, as embodied by Iva’s brother, who clings to his job instead of defending her, and her colleague (Ovanes Torosyan), who is aware of her innocence but does not take her side, among other examples. Exploiters and victims remain in their places, with the latter suffering an even more debilitated image and having no chance for emancipation.

As for the artistic qualities of the film itself, if Eli Skorcheva’s dramatic talent in Blaga’s Lessons elicited an array of contradictory emotions, Pletnyova’s even-toned presence here evokes mostly pity, with more complex nuances left to the supporting characters, while the cinematic language – a mix of TV-series aesthetics with touches of cinéma vérité – would have been far more immersive had greater emphasis been placed on the latter.

Made in EU is a co-production by Bulgaria’s Argo Film Ltd, Germany’s 42film GmbH and the Czech Republic’s Negativ Film Productions. Its international sales are handled by Heretic Outreach.