THE JUDGMENT
Director: Stephan Komandarev
Feature film | D/BG/HR/MK | 2014
112 min | Dolby 5.1
48th Hof International Film Festival
2014
The story takes place in a small and impoverished village in Bulgaria near the border to Turkey and Greece. Mityo lives with his 18-year-old son Vasko. The relationship between the two is strained after the recent death of Fanka, Mityo’s wife and Vasko’s mother. And the situation gets even worse when the dairy where Mityo works goes bankrupt. Without a job, he can’t cover the payments on the loan he took out several years ago to pay for Fanka’s medical treatment. There is a real danger that Mityo and Vasko will end up homeless since the family house serves as a guarantee on the mortgage.
Hitting rock bottom, Mityo accepts a job with his former commander, Captain, from his army days. His job is to smuggle illegal immigrants from Syria across the Bulgarian-Turkish border into the EU. The road passes through a fateful place for Mityo, the place where he once killed a young East German couple trying to escape to the West during his military service. For 25 years, he has been living with this memory and every time he passes the cliff with another group of immigrants, it becomes more difficult for him to bear his guilt.
When Vasko reveals his father’s secret the conflict between father and son escalates. Mityo is prepared to do whatever it takes and accepts one last, risky assignment, unaware that he will have to face the past in order to regain his internal peace and find forgiveness from his son.