Bulgarian Stories (2007)

Bulgaria Stories is a film about people, their singing, and a culture that literally disappears before our very eyes, whose last musical sounds dissolve into nothingness. In the year 1977 NASA launches several messages from us. Stored inside the Voyager spacecraft among The Beatles, a newborn's cry, Beethoven and the sound of a dog barking, the voice of Bulgarian folklore singer Valya Balkanska drifts through the endless expanses of the cosmos. 39 years have since passed. No one in Bulgaria cares for extraterrestrial life anymore, among the population a majority has to live without steady work, while 15 Euros of retirement pension hardly suffice for paying food and electricity. Mountain villages are haunted by abandonment, plundered school buildings and once splendid concert halls vainly await Valya Balkanska's return. What remains are lonely, impoverished women, often still capable of calling to mind up to 200 or 300 songs. With fear and grief one has to face the fact that soon they will take their knowledge and their beliefs, not to mention the songs, into the grave.