Godless

Bulgarian debutant Ralitza Petrova has made an incredibly well-acted, non-compromising drama with Godless. Irena Ivanova stars as Gana, a nurse who works at a home for demented elderly, but makes a living (and supports her morphine addiction) by stealing the inhabitants' ID cards and selling them on the black market. Everyone is sedated in 'Godless', either by drugs, dementia or their own nihilistic bluntness. But when Gana one day hears one of her older patients sing, she starts to wake up – and this is when things start going wrong. The setting of post-communist Bulgaria adds to the darkness of the film. This is a word of povery in which the poor exploit those who are even poorer than themselves, and thirty years after the advent of democratic rule there are few signs of any positive development. MFL

Ralitza Petrova (b. 1976) lives and works in her home country Bulgaria as well as in France and the UK. The studied at the National Film and Television School in London, and her short films have won awards at festivals such as Berlin and Cannes. Godless is her first feature film, and won the Golden Leopard for beste film at the renowned Locarno festival in 2016.