Adela Media Film and TV Production Company

Silence with Dignity

Documentary
Running time: 60 minutes
Production company: ADELA MEDIA Film and TV Production
With the support of: National Film Center; Culture program of Sofia Municipality
Director: Аdela Peeva
Co-director: Antoniy Donchev
Script: Adela Peeva, Luciena Krumova
Cinematographer: Emil Topuzov
Executive producer: Slobodan Milovanovic
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SILENCE WITH DIGNITY is a painstaking chronicle of the systematic destruction of talent and creativity through state-socialist censorship, on the example of Bulgarian film directors Irina Aktasheva (1931-2018) and Hristo Piskov (1927-2009). It is a story about their life and work, their emblematic films and of those whose realization was banned, about the criteria according to which a film was classified as "too dangerous" under communism, about the mechanisms of censorship, their persistence and creative survival and silence charged with dignity. Their masterpiece Monday Morning (1966) was shown on the big screen 22 years after it was shot.

Short synopsis

What are the criteria according to which under communism a film was banned from being shown and did not reach the screens for years – if it was shown at all? Were there any criteria at all, or everything had been a result of reports and slanders against artists? How did the true creators who were not servile to the authorities, survive at all, and what did it cost them to make their films?

Answers to these questions are sought in the film "Silence with Dignity" – a story about the difficult creative path of one of the most talented directors in the Bulgarian cinema –the family couple Irina Aktasheva and Hristo Piskov.

They worked in the years of full and constant ideological control over art. Their films were banned by censors and they became part of the authors of the so-called "frozen films". Their masterpiece Monday Morning (1966) was shown on the big screen 22 years after it was shot. Because of this film, Irina and Hristo lost their jobs for more than 10 years.

"Silence with dignity”focuses on the intellectual integrity, artistic convictions and uncompromising stand, regardless of the political torture by those in power. It peeks into the until recently inaccessible documents from the archives of the former State Security.

Awards

  • Critics’ Prize – National Non-Fiction Films Festival “Golden Rhyton” – 2020
  • Bulgarian National Film Archive Award – National Non-Fiction Films Festival “Golden Rhyton” – 2020

Selected for

  • National Non-Fiction Films Festival “Golden Rhyton” – 2020
  • International Book & Movie Festival Cinelibri – 2020
  • Sofia International Film Festival – 2020
  • History Film Festival, Rijeka, Croatia – 2020
  • Art Festival “Apolonia” – 2020