Bulgarian Cinema in Sydney

Everybody is hopping on a plane, bus, train or car and heading for a seaside vacation! Not all of them, actually, because two of the main characters live there and own a small family hotel. Todor, an ex-waiter, is Bulgarian and his wife Totka, an ex-athlete, is Russian. Their first guests are two older women, Veska and Stefka, who are friends despite having completely different views on life. Next arrives the well-off and seemingly happy family of Anton and Lilly with a little girl called Maya. Charming Ani and her boyfriend Niky, a hopeless dreamer, occupy one more room. The couple seems to be in love, at least at the outset of the story. There is also a man called Mladen, a clandestine lover of the married Lilly.

The seaside vacation turns out to be a catalyst that changes the lives and relations of our characters. Breaking out of the everyday rut, they are eager to experience new things they miss in their daily routine. However, reality proves to be quite different from the pre-planned bliss. Each step our holiday makers take is fraught with dangers and traps. The funny situations they find themselves in reveal real communications problems in relationships disguised by good manners and hypocrisy.

A boat trip to a small deserted island with no connection to the world turns into a nightmare when the skipper Totka, a former rowing champion, dies of a heart attack and the empty boat drifts out to sea. Left to the mercy of fate on the tiny island, the unlucky travelers experience fear, hunger, thirst, love and infidelity. They demonstrate courage and fear, honesty and unscrupulousness, strength and helplessness. These seemingly comic situations put them to the test of life. They will find the hard way that happiness is not in our circumstances, in the sand or waves but within ourselves, within relationships we enter with other people.

Tested to the limits of their spirit and endurance on the deserted beach, our characters have hopefully become a little wiser and a little kinder.