Dorotea Toncheva

1987 Bulgarian 2-part television feature film (drama) directed by Binka Zhelyazkova

Violetta is a ballerina in a provincial town. She is the daughter of an opera singer and a violinist. The years pass in anticipation of the big role, and the men she meets do not understand her and she remains alone. When the chance finally comes - to play the role of Odette, Violetta realises she has failed.

A couple of young ladies decide to obtain a driving license. The film is a true comedy of relations, caused between the driving-teacher and the beginner-drivers.

Elena, a pregnant young girl walks the steep path to the orphanage where single mothers often leave their children. The girls in the hospital greet Elena with a ritual they made up. She remains closed in herself. Elena tries to contact the boy who is the father with no success. Instead of him, his parents come. People who wish to adopt a child also come. Another woman does not find the strength to overcome the critical attitude of the people towards single mothers. This leads Elena to decision to take care of her baby by herself.

The middle-aged poor painter Tsokov doesn't believe in marriage, something completely unacceptable in a cramped socialist society.

The beginning of the 20th century. The young Nona comes back to her father's farm from Switzerland. She meets colonel Galchev. The officer expresses his love for her. The teacher Yosif who is in love with Nona organizes a revolt of the villagers with no property. Armed villagers rob the farm. Galchev and his soldiers arrive. During the shooting, the colonel is killed. Nona accuses Yosif of Galchev's death. The carriage of Nona's fiancé, who travels from Switzerland to the village, passes by the coffin with Galchev's body. A second after the fiancé enters her house Nona kills herself.

The seven women inmates in Poslednata Duma are imprisoned because they have been associated with partisans opposing the fascist puppet government of the German Nazis. Each of them has the power to save herself if she will betray the others, and each bravely refuses to do so, even though it means they all will die. Despite their grim situation, and the atrocities perpetuated on them as political prisoners, they manage to laugh, and even celebrate a festival.

The Bulgarian intelligence service has information that the top agent Peron is to arrive in Bulgaria. The higher official of the counter intelligence Ivan with an alias Y 17 is to investigate. Peron has to meet his local contact, the former ship captain Rudnev. The young Mina is accommodated in Rudnev's home. Rudnev figures that she is counterintelligence and agrees to cooperate with the task force. Soon after, Peron meets Mina and an eccentric engineer, fired from the job. The young man is the deep undercover agent Y 117. Peron tests the man. He tells him that Mina is an agent of the Bulgarian counterintelligence, and gives him a gun to kill her. Y 117 shoots Mina but the bullet was a blank. After that Y 117 should leave the country with Peron.

Chavdar gets a degree in geology. He wishes to pursue a scientific carrier, but his father decides that his son should practice his profession in a rich of mineral Rhodopa Mountain. Chavdar meets geologists and locals who love their profession and the region. Here he finds true love with Vanya, a girl born and raised in the mountain. She is a part time geologist student and dreams of finding new ore sources. Chavdar has to leave, and he bids farewell to his friends, certain that one day he will come back to continue his search.

In September 1944, an unusual train travels to the Turkish border. Abroad the train are German fascists and Bulgarian King's officers who carry important papers and archives. A group of partisan chases the fugitives with a track. Soon airplanes with red stars on their wings could be seen in the sky. The planes are reinforcements from the Soviet aviation squadron. With its help the partisans capture the fugitives.

The film is based on the memoir 'In the name of the People' by Mitka Grybcheva, an activist in the anti-fascist resistance. The action takes place during the WWII and reveals the sharp clash between police power and resistance forces, headed by the Communist Party of Bulgaria. This is a time when, 'in the name of the people', the fighters are setting up underground combat groups, which punish with death their political opponents. The film's characters are specially trained for the purpose young people, members of one such combat group. Against the background of their risky task, in the execution of which they have to pay with their own lives, every facet of their characters stands out. Faced with death they reveal their intimate worlds, their unrealized youthful impulses that have been sacrificed in the name of commands, disparate from the Ten Christian Commandments.

This film brings us back to show us the life of the famous ancient sage Aesop, who helped people with his wisdom in their struggle for freedom and happiness.

At the end of 13th and the beginning of the 14th century twenty-four-years old, Prince Svetoslav Terter takes the helm of the state. The young Prince engages in a intricate political game, into getting his way by means of court intrigues, and is forced by circumstances. Svetoslav Terter is remarkably shrewd and consistent. He is perhaps the only head of state at this time to take the liberty of impeaching the primate of the country's church. He tries to rally the neighboring Slav people to a joint resistance to the Turkish conquest. Terter lives through a great personal tragedy. He becomes estranged from his dearest person, Mariya, who is too weak to join him on the difficult road of his choice. (written by Georgi Djulgerov)

In a white ward in a clinic a lifetime balance on the verge of death. Memories are herding together in the mind of seriously ill Aleksandrov, a scientist, who evaluates and reevaluates his own life: friendships, loves, career. Images of his youth are crowding in: of his beloved, of his children, of evenings, spent with his friends, ups and downs. And no one is able to say if all this made any difference.

The courage to preserve one's integrity in trying times.

A bandit chief falls in love with a wealthy man's daughter.

On the road one day two people meet again after seventeen years. They'd had a brief, burning affair seventeen years earlier, in their idealistic youth. That had been just after the war, the time of great enthusiasms and faith in the future. Wishing to dedicate themselves to the new society they had chosen to renounced personal happiness, considering their love as an impermissible sidetrack from the requirements of the time.