Thirst
Description
In this starkly beautiful and tragic drama, a teenage boy lives with his mother and father on a hill in rural Bulgaria. It’s summertime, and the countryside is in the grip of a crippling drought, which is particularly troubling as the family’s main income comes from doing the washing for nearby hotels. Enter an enigmatic teenage girl and her father. He drills wells, guided by her eerie ability to locate water beneath the ground. The mother is suspicious of the young woman’s dowsing, but, having no alternative, she commissions a well and the father and daughter set up camp on the family’s land. While mutual need draws these two small families together, the disparity between what each requires, buried deep as the groundwater, will pull them apart. Thirst’s story is straightforward, but rich with foreshadowing images. These are taciturn people, living together physically but psychologically isolated, and the story unfolds through details and things unsaid. Filmmaker Svetla Tsotsorkova immediately establishes a bewitching sense of place—a dusty road, row upon row of bedsheet ghosts pinned on a line in a hot summer breeze—and compels viewers to hold their breath as truth and trouble channel their way to the surface. —Laura Henneman
Thirst is Svetla Tsotsorkova’s first feature as a director. She graduated from the National Academy for Theatre and Film Arts in Sofia, Bulgaria, in 2004 and works as a producer and actress. Her short film, Life with Sophia, screened at many prestigious international festivals and was awarded at Beijing, Sofia and others.
Trailer
//player.vimeo.com/video/158107913?autoplay=1Film Details
Language Bulgarian
Year 2015
Premiere North American
Runtime 90
Country Bulgaria
Director Svetla Tsotsorkova
Producer Nadejda Koseva, Svetla Tsotsorkova
Writer Svetoslav Ovcharov, Svetla Tsotsorkova, Ventsislav Vasilev
Editor Nina Altaparmakova, Svetla Tsotsorkova
Cinematographer Vesselin Hristov
Music Hristo Namliev
Cast Monika Naydenova, Alexander Benev, Svetlana Yancheva