From Identity to Ecology in the new Bulgarian Cinema: the Unique Case of Àga (2018) and the Poetics of the Icy Wasteland

Abstract

After the perestroika, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the USSR and the socialist bloc, Bulgarian post-totalitarian cinema stands on a new path and contexts, in the milieu of wide East European or Balkan cinema. The film artifact offers a unique opportunity not only to interpret the foreign world, but also to rearrange its own cultural values. The issue of dialogue between identities in the global and contemporary cinema process is definitely extremely interesting, complex and multifaceted. The present study focuses its attention on an internationally recognized co-production – Àga full-length movie (2018, dir. Milko Lazarov, Bulgaria-Germany-France, 96`), shot in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). Definitely, this is something new for the national cinema – to realize original themes and stories on the Bulgarian-Asian axis, to introduce the total unused, attractive even personages, often even in a non-Bulgarian cultural environment. The film is among the best of Bulgarians cinema produced since 1989. A very important aspect in Àga is not only the topic of Otherness, but also the strong environmental engagement. The analysis shows that Lazarov`s film is not purely or only ecological, but universal as onscreen suggestions. Àga affects fundamental and universal human categories. Through the language of the closed Inuit community, a kind of microcosm, speaks to the world community – the macro level.