Kato pesen (1973)

This is a warm-hearted, lyrical recollection of the period immediately before and after September 9, 1944, the date of the Socialist Revolution in Bulgaria. Against an atmosphere of general jubilation the film traces the short life of Tinko, a pure and altruistic idealist. The young revolutionary lives through a series of events in which the masses play a central role. We see a session of people's tribunal, a funeral rally, a meeting with Soviet soldiers. Tinko sees only the romantic side of this blend of joy, death and sorrow. Wherever he happens to be he wishes to play a leading role. With an adolescent selflessness and self-confidence verging on naïveté he preaches the high morality of the new civilization at mass rallies, he wants to lecture everyone he meets - his comrade-in-arms Iliykata, the petty bourgeois newly-weds at a wedding reception, the itinerant black-marketer impervious to change. Tinko is doing the best he can to serve the Revolution, but at the end he is killed. This character has gained a noteworthy place in Bulgarian cinema not so much as a revolutionary, but as an impersonation of pure revolutionary enthusiasm.