After the End of the World is about a sentimental journey into the past and present of Bulgaria. After more than forty years of absence, a well-known Israeli professor, Albert Cohen-Berto, returns for a scientific conference that is being held in his native city, Plovdiv, in the early 1990s. There he meets the love of his life, the Armenian beauty Araxi, and together they revisit their childhood. Along with the memories of their naïve courtship, first shy kisses and fleeting touches, there emerges an overwhelmingly nostalgic picture of the old Bulgarian town of Plovdiv, where people from all religions and ethnicities—gypsies, Bulgarians, Turks, Armenians, and Jews—lived in harmony and respect, and were always ready to help each other. The representatives of the three major religions in Plovdiv—Rabbi Ben David, Hodja Ibrahim, and Father Isaiah—live in almost anecdotal harmony in spite of occasional arguments: they play cards together, gossip together, and together court the local Turkish beauty, Zulfie Hanum. This romantic picture is dominated by the colorful Abraham the Drunk, Berto’s grandfather, who is the most serious contender for Zulfie’s heart—and that of every beautiful woman in town—despite the careful eye of his doting wife.
The idyll, however, lasts only until the new communist government comes into power and the irreversible tragedy of displacement and exile starts. First, the gypsies are uprooted and sent somewhere to the north western parts of the country, then Turkish graves are desecrated in the name of the “bright future of the collective farm,” thus prompting exile to neighboring Turkey. After labelling Araxi’s beautiful mother and quiet father as “bourgeois elements”—her for speaking French and playing the piano, him for owning a small factory—the new regime forces them to seek refuge with rich Armenian relatives in France. The pain of this deeply traumatic separation is made palpable through the eyes of young Araxi, Berto, and their ethnically mixed friends. Araxi’s family while leaving for Paris is brutally taken off the train and interned—her father is sent to a labor camp and her mother to a poor village, where she works herself to death for their daily bread. When the Jews of Plovdiv also decide to leave and move to the land of their ancestors, Israel, Berto’s grandfather objects vehemently by declaring that one belongs where the graves of his loved ones are, and states that he would never leave the land that holds the remains of his only son, fallen in the anti-fascist struggle. His is one of the most moving patriotic outbursts ever heard in Bulgarian cinema, putting into words the mounting frustration of a society torn asunder. And indeed, he never does leave the land where his loved ones are buried because of his accidental death. And so, young Berto leaves only with his grandmother.
The encounter between Araxi and Berto, 40 years later turns into a desperate attempt of two lonely people to put together the broken pieces of their childhood, brutally scattered by the irreversible course of time.
The film has won 5 prizes of the Union of the Bulgarian Film Makers – for best picture, directing, male performance, cinematography and music. |
