Viktoria
Product Details

• Actors: Irmena Chichikova, Daria Vitkova, Kalina Vitkova, Mariana Krumova, Dimo Dimov
• Directors: Maya Vitkova
• Format: Color, Dolby, NTSC, Surround Sound, Widescreen
• Language: Bulgarian
• Subtitles: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: Unrated Not Rated
• Studio: Big World Pictures
• DVD Release Date: November 8, 2016

Maya Vitkova\'s stunning debut feature VIKTORIA followsthree generations of women in the final years of the People\'s Republic ofBulgaria and the early years of the new government, focusing on reluctantmother Boryana and her daughter, Viktoria, who in one of the film\'s surreal,magical touches is born without an umbilical cord. Though unwanted by hermother, Viktoria is named the country\'s Baby of the Decade, and is showeredwith gifts and attention until the disintegration of the East Bloc. Despitethrowing their worlds off balance, the resulting political changes also allowfor the possibility of reconciliation. VIKTORIA is both personal anduniversal, demonstrating a precocious command of all elements of thefilmmaking process most notably, the film\'s visual sensibility and its commandof a range of shifting tones, from absurdist humor to political allegory todeeply moving familial drama. Vitkova, named a Producer on the Move by theEuropean Film Promotion in Cannes, wrote, produced and directed VIKTORIAthrough her own production company Viktoria Films (Bulgaria) and Anca andCristi Puiu\'s Mandragora (Romania). Review VIKTORIA is a very rare kind offilm, one that is centered on the feelings of bearing a woman\'s body--of thephysical as well as emotional inwardness of women\'s lives--and that alsodepicts the vast national and even world-historical stage that renders it atonce real and mythic, far beyond reach and all-too-present. It\'s a long film--two and a half hours; it has an elaborate and intricate plot that\'s full oftwists and details so sharply observed and cleverly realized that all of themseem like spoilers, looking back from the ultimate dramatic resolution to thepremise with which the action starts, in the first dramatic scene. The verydescription of the plot shines with the film\'s ingenuity and emotionalintensity. It\'s a passionately realistic story that details the daily lives ofits characters but is based on wondrous flights of fantasy that Vitkovarealizes by means of simple yet gleefully audacious special effects. For allits basis in political and historical frustrations and affirmations, VIKTORIAis an exquisitely stylized film, with precisely composed and timed images of adelicate and involute whimsy that stifles howls of rage and derision, quietand terse dialogue that distills lifelong passions and longings in thelacerating undertones of simple phrases that glint like blades catchingsunlight...It\'s as if VIKTORIA were filmed in the grammatical feminine; it\'sone of the great recent films by a woman about women, and it casts Vitkova tothe forefront of contemporary filmmakers. Her inventiveness, her confessionaland technical audacity, her emotional and historical insight, the unity of herdramatic and aesthetic sensibilities, make the film a treasure of the currentcinema. All the more astonishingly, it\'s Vitkova s first feature; all the moredismayingly, it has been sitting on the shelf for two years, after premièringat Sundance in 2014. It\'s the first Bulgarian film to be shown at Sundance andone of the few Bulgarian films to be shown in the United States at all. It maytake a movie industry to give rise to a movie artist, but it takes one greatdirector to press ahead and open the artistic spaces in which other filmmakerscan let their own imagination run free. On the basis of Viktoria alone, theBulgarian cinema has a bright future. --Richard Brody, THE NEW YORKERAstrikingly assured and ambitious feature debut...plenty of dryly absurdistEastern European humor... an arresting mix of satire, surrealism andambivalently angsty drama, with the helmer in precocious full command ofpacing, tone and aesthetics... VIKTORIA heralds such a fascinating filmicsensibility that one eagerly looks forward to whatever Vitkova does next.--Dennis Harvey, VARIETY

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