They say Iglika Triffonova is one of the directors forming the "New Wave" of Bulgarian cinema, the "generation '89" that finally broke with the traditions of good communist cinema that others were still trying to live up to. Her debut was in documentary cinema: Year 1990 (1990) won first prize at the Prix Futura festival in Berlin, and Possible Distances (1992) won an award in Moldova. But her big break came with Letter to America (2001), a feature film about a man in search of a folk song believed to raise the dead. Still, Triffonova calls herself "a documentary cinema person" and insists she needs to plant her movies in solid reality. With her latest movie, Investigation (2006), the winner of the Grand Prize at the Cottbus Film Festival, she does exactly that. The psychological thriller examines the relationship between an investigator and a convict and grew out of her own experience interviewing and filming people condemned to death, for her documentary Tales of Murder (1994). The script of Investigation is based on the actual lawsuit of a man who killed his brother. Like most Bulgarian directors, however, despite the international success of her movies, Triffonova has to fight for foreign finance to be able to continue filming. Both Letter to America and Investigation are Bulgarian-Dutch co-productions and are currently the only Bulgarian movies touring Dutch cinemas. Meanwhile, Triffonova is busy bringing Holland to Bulgaria in reciprocity; she is planting hundreds of Dutch tulips in the garden of an old village house in the Botevgrad municipality that she and her husband, actor Hristo Gurbov, bought five years ago. She is also writing a script for her next movie, but won't reveal the details.

You filmed Tales of Murder while Bulgaria was deciding whether to ban the death penalty, which was lifted in 1998. Did a sense of social responsibility draw you to it?
Tales of Murder is a very existential film, this is why I did it. The idea was Meglena Kouneva's, she was a journalist back then and she had talked to people condemned to death. It was the beginning of the 90's and there was a moratorium on the death penalty. We went to jails and met people condemned to death. These conversations broke my illusion that the criminal doesn't want to talk about their crime.

How does it feel to talk to prisoners?
You try to understand some things about yourself, which to me is the right way to go. In Investigation, there is one very intimate moment between the investigator and the criminal that I personally lived through while shooting Tales of Murder. So, simply put, I wanted to learn things about myself through the crime of another person because in this condition the criminal is very bare, you can touch things that you would otherwise need time to understand. I wanted to understand my dark side, why I am prone to aggression, why I hate, why I become furious, is there a way to prevent this…?

And did you understand?
Not completely, unfortunately. I was close to it…

You kept meeting Milorad, one of your charcters in Tales of Murder, long after the shooting was over. Does time in jail change people for the better?
I haven't seen him in about a year and a half. Unfortunately, even Milorad, who was hyper-intelligent and kept reading psychology literature in jail, became callous because he had spent most of his conscious life with criminals.

You have said earlier that Kieslowski's A Short Film About Killing (Dekalog 5) gave you the courage to do Investigation. But wasn't the success of Letter to America enough?
It's normal to receive courage from outside. The Dekalog impressed me with its daring. It tells these very simple stories and delves deeply into the psychology of the characters. I'd always wanted to make such cinema and when I saw the Dekalog, I told myself: damn it, you simply have to hold out. And when the Dutch distributor saw it, he patted me on the shoulder and said: I congratulate you for making a real psychological film without any safety belts, something that Europe no longer does. 
 
Why not?
Well, because everyone imitates the formula of the successful movie. But cinema has always been propelled by people who want to do things they are actually passionate about.

You have said that you wonder if there is a point in making movies when nobody needs them. Do you still think so?
I must admit much of my confidence comes from what happens to my movies abroad. So I am very happy that I can work under different conditions. Here, I am always put in the position of a person who has to feel guilty about something. Right now I'm negotiating the sale of the copyrights for Investigation. An Austro-English firm wants to do a remake with famous actors. This is a big compliment for me. Also, in the first two weeks of screening in Holland, Investigation managed to attract three times the audience it did in Bulgaria. But, in Bulgaria, Investigation was only shown in Sofia, Varna and Plovdiv.
 
Why don't movies get a better distribution?
It is terribly complicated. In Bulgaria, in order to have a production, you must do it all: write your script, direct the movie, and virtually distribute it yourself. A single person can't have all these skills. Also, businessmen buy out cinemas and then change their function because the defaults they pay for breaching their contracts are minimal. It's very sad. My actors and I have had very happy moments, but these were in Amsterdam, at the January premiere of Investigation. Especially Svetlana Yancheva, the lead actress, who saw herself on posters all over Amsterdam. In Bulgaria, posters usually appear for a day, and the next day they are plastered over with pictures of chalga singers.

But there is a hunger for Bulgarian cinema…
I think so too. I will never forget that when we showed Letter to America in Yambol, we talked to the young audience for an hour and a half - my feet went soft. And it was only then that I realised that there is this whole post-'89 generation that had only watched American movies. These 13-18-year-olds were excited to hear Bulgarian being spoken on  the big screen!

Have women found it difficult to break the male hegemony in Bulgarian cinema?
This was so when I enrolled in the National Academy for Theatre and Film Art. Two or three out of five-six film graduates each year were women, and this was considered  an inordinate figure. I was then very small, so people thought I couldn't stand before 3 000 people and shout. But that was very unprofessional because there are assistant directors and megaphones, so even 9 000 people can hear you. I don't think there has been any male hegemony in recent years, but around 1989 when I started directing, my husband heard some colleagues say that women cannot be directors. And he was very angry.

And how did you decide to become a director?
Well, I suspect it had something to do with an event when I was about eight. Back then my mother was a singer in the Philip Koutev folklore ensemble and she had a rehearsal for a big concert. And there was this man: a director of the spectacle. And it was very interesting for me how this man could do this whole thing, how he commanded and even scolded them. I was enthralled. My mother told me I'd later asked her many questions about him. Afterwards I often ran away from school to go to the movies because of my very problematic puberty. I didn't miss a single Bulgarian film. Cinema attracted me a hell of a lot.

Is there a book, a play or a story that you want to film now?
Not any specific story, but I would really like to work on some ready text. Writing is an extremely complicated thing.

Do you have established writing rituals?
No, there is no single method that works with me. And it is very different. Letter to America was very painful to write. With Investigation it was different because the case had been in my head for eight years, so one day I just sat down and wrote the script for 25 days. I didn't get up until I finished it. But I am not disciplined. I just write and write, then just sit and stare stupidly at the monitor. My eyes start hurting, but I don't think of looking away. Or I play Solitaire until I grow numb just so that I am there when the smallest thing comes to mind. But it is a hard physical labour. I never sweat as much as when I write. When I finish, let's say, a page, I take a shower. I don't sweat that much even when I dig the ground in the village. I enter such an intense state that my body can't cope.

How much time do you need to "come out" of a movie?
After Letter to America and Investigation, I guess I wanted to jump into a different matter immediately. I embroider the montage in very, very tiny detail, so I keep watching and watching the movie so many times that when it's done I don't watch it anymore, it starts its separate life.

Do you reach a point when you start to hate your movie?
Oh, of course. And it is very tormenting because my movies depend on this undercurrent emotion. And it is exactly this emotion that holds the movies together that disappears while you do the editing. So I am very grateful to my editor Yordanka Buchvarova because I had two moments when I wanted to cut and cut, but she said: "Oh, I won't let you wreck my movie!"

Do you know other artists who fall into such states?
I guess I haven't heard of friends with such unhealthy and hysterical bouts.

How do you feel during the first screening of your movie before an audience?
I never watch it with an audience. I am horribly afraid. I first saw Investigation around  two years ago on TV. But it's easy on TV because there is no audience and you can switch the channel anytime. So I saw it all and I sincerely admired the actors for the first time. It was only then I actually saw them somewhat from outside. While we do the montage I am so much into technicalities that I can't feel the human stuff.